Reign of Chaos
by The Sh33p
Summary: All Hell has broken loose, and the Reign of Chaos has begun... Followup to New Age, AU, heavy on just about everything, enjoy!
1. Requiem for a Dream

  
  
**Disclaimer:** I don`t own Zoids. Consider this disclaimer valid for the whole damn story :P  
  
**Foreword:** I advise reading New Age before reading this story, most of the backplot is mentioned/built up over the course of it and you`re missing serious chunk of everything without it.  
  
Oh, and listen to the long version of Requiem for a Dream while you`re reading this chapter >_> It fits quite nicely.  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**_  
Requiem for a Dream_   
  
  
  


An explosion sounded, rocking the HoverCargo severely as the golden form of the Scout Fox detonated like the trap it had been all along, going sky high in a matter of seconds while the inherently unstable snail-like Zoid carrier trembled violently from the blast. Leena and Jamie, both caught completely unprepared, had ended up thrown to the floor in no time, Brad was only just standing and Steven had been bent over the console, smacking his forehead into one of the smaller screens by accident as a result.   
  
All in all, the Blitz Team had been rattled out of their collective stupor in a horribly ruthless sort of way, but in truth: It certainly beat the hell out of being killed.   
  
"That thing would`ve ripped out the guts of the HoverCargo," Steven announced dryly, a bit of awe inherent to his voice. Brad grimaced and Jamie just rubbed the sore side of his head. Leena on the other hand...   
  
"**_WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!_**"   
  
"The end of the world," Brad replied with a dry, utterly serious tone.   
  
"Looks like they`ve nailed the Judge Satellites too," Steven added before Jamie or his daughter could even try to ask anything else.   
  
  
"What do you mean?" Leon asked, glancing over at Naomi from where his eyes had formerly been glued to the radio. The woman was utterly somber, merely raising a sleeved arm and pointed up with one finger. Leon followed the direction until he was staring straight into the night sky, where a dozen faintly visible fireballs were waiting to be seen, each one a mixture of fading blue and deathly orange, vague shockwaves rippling off of each one.   
  
It was almost beautiful, in a disturbing sort of way.   
  
"Isn`t there a city or a town close by?" Leon asked, something stirring briefly in his voice. Whatever it was, Naomi only heard a faintness of it that sent a chill down her spine, and whether that was a good chill or a bad chill, she didn`t know.   
  
"Romeo City, Leon. We`ve only been traveling there for three hours," she answered sarcastically. Leon nodded, mostly to himself. "I don`t think I`m going to stay on course though... The biggest city in the neutral zone isn`t exactly a good place to avoid getting nailed to a wall, right about now," she thoughtfully pointed out with the strategic tone of a soldier, though she`d never actually had any military experience.   
  
"Then you can drop me off now. And my Liger," Leon replied, already undoing his seatbelt. Naomi facefaulted.   
  
"_What?_"   
  
"If that place is a target, it`s going to need a defense," the older of the Tauros siblings exclaimed with the same fire that had once burned in the heart of Dan Fleiheit, one of his own ancestors.   
  
"Are you nuts?"   
  
"Is it insane to want to keep innocent people from getting slaughtered?" Leon asked, even the Gustav ground to a halt, the cockpit flipping open with a gasp of air. The cold, humid air of the desert at night stung like a bee for several seconds, and in that time, nothing but a deafening silence could be heard. Finally, Naomi answered.   
  
"No, but would they do the same for you?"   
  
"If you don`t help, you`re no better than the cockroaches you love snuffing out," Leon stated, hopping out of the cockpit without another word. By the time that Naomi had finished thinking up a comeback -   
  
"Let`s go, Blade Liger!"   
  
- Leon had already climbed into the cockpit of the Red Blade Liger, which was swift and agile in darting off and around the the trailers of the Gustav, as well as the Gustav itself, before taking off at a full run for Romeo City.   
  
  
"I guess things are beginning early," Leyon muttered to himself, leering up uneasily into the early evening sky. It was just the kind of incident he`d been planning for all along, of course. Being an evil rogue Zoid scientist meant that he had to be prepared for any and all utterly _un_likely events that most people would correctly deem utterly insane and not worth their team to even think about.   
  
Of course half the joys of being an evil rogue Zoid scientist was when you were actually proven _right_ in your seeming insanity. Then again, the end of the world as he had known it didn`t quite cause Doctor Leyon to break into doing the funky chicken and mockingly laughing like a cheap prick at all of the people who had called him a dangerous psychopath through the past oh say... Thirteen or fourteen years or so, but it _was_ a tempting prospect for him...   
  
"... Nahhhh," he muttered to himself, chucking the half-empty box of ramen noodles off to the side and then leaning back in his desk chair. Now why he was in his desk chair, eating ramen noodles in the middle of the early evening out in the desert was anyone`s guess, but the Whale King, Empress Heart(an old nickname he`d given to the late Rina Tauros), sat not too far in the background. It was a small Whale King, not like his old flying fortress of a carrier. No, _that_ particular Zoid was now out of his and anyone else`s reach for the time being. Emphasis on the time being, of course.   
  
"I guess I did good to make s`many preparations..." He mused, thinking to two particular projects of interest. The Duality Project that had spawned the Shadow Fox, and then Project Blue. With a grave, knowing grin, the supposedly mad scientist stood up, resolving to watch the end of the world on his feet for once.   
  
And then he looked around.   
  
No one was watching...   
  
"**_WHO`S RIGHT NOW, ASSCLOWNS?!_**"   
  
And with that, Leyon Martin broke into dancing the funky chicken and mockingly laughing like a cheap prick.   
  
  
There was a stir within the back of a specially modified cryogenics trailer being towed as part of a five Zoid convoy by an unmarked, mostly white-colored Gustav, standard issue by the lack of heavy armament or reinforced crab-like all terrain legs like some models of the Zoid. It was being accompanied by four unmarked Godos Zoids, each of which was also apparently unmodified, despite being military issue.   
  
The problem with the trailer was that the cryogenics were geared primarily for Zoid cores, no one had ever really bothered to try and find out how the Ancient Zoidians had crafted the pods that held so few of the once millions-strong species known as the Organoids.   
  
Such was why, whenever Borealis stirred even slightly, the three armed guards in the chamber they were keeping the half-asleep creature in would all take aim at an assumed kill spot. Nevermind the fact that many Organoids - particularly the younger ones - were close to bullet proof. The chamber was kept frigid of course, all three of the men were having to wear specially crafted bio-warfare capable heat suits, their only fields of vision being directly in front, and even that was partially obscured since the plastic goggles they wore kept fogging up every few seconds.   
  
Finally though, the red-black-and-blue Organoid stirred once more, managing to get to it`s feet in a daze. All three leveled their guns assertively, Borealis was too busy shaking the frost off of himself to even pay attention to them.   
  
"Sir... The thing is waking up..."   
  
"Don`t shoot it unless it attacks," a voice responded through the iced-over loudspeaker.   
  
**_ What hit me?   
  
_** Suddenly, a foul screech echoed around the convoy, and almost instantly, every one of the Godos went down in flames, a single green streak plowing through the lot of them before slamming down through the glass of the Gustav`s cockpit and drilling through to the ground, killing the pilot instantly in the process. Safety mechanisms did the rest, and the Zoid ground to a halt seconds later, all three guards suddenly terrified in the extreme.   
  
"I don`t like this..." One of the guards said, pulling down his mask and frantically searching around in one of his pockets as the cryogenics stasis unit shut down completely, then removing a pack and a lighter. A few seconds later, he took a deep drag off of his cigarette. It left him frigid from the neck up, but at least it calmed him down a bit.   
  
"I-" He was cut off from continuing further as a new Voice filled the minds of all three. Normally they wouldn`t have heard it, but an Organoid`s true Voice was audible to anything with a mind, while it`s other voice tended to be audible only to it`s Bound partner.   
  
_** You? You`ve been havin` a bad day, haven`t`cha?**_ Borealis began, though the Organoid seemed to be trembling every few seconds in the cold. **_Ya been DRAFTED OUT OF A FUCKING PEACEFUL life to come drag my sorry inhuman ass OUT OF THE GOD DAMNED DIRT after I have a NERVOUS BREAKdown, and hey, that cigarette is looking MIGHTY FUCKING GOOD right about NOW! _**  
  
All three of the men stared blankly.   
  
**_ Wanna SHARE IT OR I`LL KILL all of you,_** a pause due to a random twitch, then it continued, **_excuse my language, I`m just a HARMLESS ORGANoid, yanno? Just makin` my way through life with NO PROBlems, did I mention I`m a harmless, GOOD NATURED LITTLE FRIEND of all LIFE, both TECHNO and ORGANIC!?   
  
_** All three continued to stare, finally starting to exchange glances at each other in worried, disbelieving silence.   
  
**_ Yanno? I just I just I just, OH GOD MY EYES ARE MOVING INDEPENDENTLY and hey, looky there, an ASSAULT RIFLE is AIMED at my FACE! _** Borealis announced as all three leveled their guns on his snout, ready to fire in an instant, even though fear and disbelief held them back. _**Oh god, oh god, oh mother of - MY RIGHT CLAW HAS JUST VANI-oh wait, there it is - god, just DON`T KILL me!   
  
**_ Another pause.   
  
_** Yanno, I`m just havin` a suitably BAD FUCKING DAY right about now - my best friend`s probably gone clinically insane with a murderous rage, my old bond-pal has snapped and gone utterly ballistic, she`s probably either dead or something just about now, my right eye`s blind from frostbite and my balls that I don`t even have are HURTING very badly and clanking together since they`d probably be made of SOLID high GRADE STEEL, BEHBEH!!! ... If I had them, that is, SOOOOO anyway, why don`t ya be a nice little human and give your new pal, Bore-FUCKING-alis a nice, long drag off the ol` deathstick, WILL YOU?!   
  
**_ The Organoid leaned forward with a howl, all three men dropped their guns and screamed, though the apparent leader also dropped his cigarette. Borealis lunged for it, but it was at about that time when the side of the trailer shattered from an external impact, which materialized itself in the form of a green tinted Organoid who held a certain resemblance to mandible-lacking Specular, landing on the ground with an agile crouch even as the cigarette came to half-way through it`s inevitable fall.   
  
Gravity was fast, Borealis was quick, Spectacle was incomprehensible, diving forward again with an echoing, mechanical growl, it`s clawed hands shooting out at the exact moment and locking firmly onto Borealis` tail, just as a green aura shot out in slow motion around the first Organoid, shifting until it was nothing but a number of green spheres on the two jet units on it`s back, both of which promptly exploded into a full blown, fiery exhaust trail -   
  
_ How wayward the young can be...   
  
_ - and promptly shredding back out through the opposite side of the trailer, blowing another hole through another fifteen inches of reinforced titanium alloy in the process, dragging along Borealis for the ride.   
  
**_ MY CIGARETTE! DAMN IT!   
  
_** ... Wayward indeed...   
  
The two Organoids soon vanished over the horizon of the evening sky.   
  
  
The middle of the blasted out, smoking ruins of what had once been one of the most important temples on ancient Zi, now little more than a glassed over look into the flames of Hell itself as two tyrannid Zoids slugged it out, two Organoids waging a mental war with one another and two pilots - brothers and enemies at once - seeking nothing short of each other`s mutual demise in the process.   
  
Sparks lit the night, two thunderous roars and one colossal impact as the Razorwind touched down from a jump, the Geno Saurer skidding backwards to a halt in front of it. The two didn`t seem evenly matched in the slightest - the Razorwind was geared chiefly towards close range, bearing out six fierce looking laser saws, each humming distinctly and attached to primary arms like those of the basic Berserk Fury, while a Geno Breaker-styled horn extended out from the forehead, sparking off with bits of electricity in it`s own fashion. A pair of forward-curved blades at the tip of either side of the tail and Geno Saurer-like add-on claws to the hands completed the blue Fury`s dangerous armament, obviously geared towards melee rather than generalized combat like the Geno.   
  
"Let`s go," Vega ordered angrily, charging forward with a howl of the thrusters in the Fury`s legs. Kale was a bit faster, only barely avoiding the three saws on the Razorwind`s left side, and even then having to lunge backwards in order to avoid a lethal swipe from the tail, which itself lead to another swipe from the saws.   
  
"New armor, same pathetic skills," the older Obscura growled out, pulling the trigger as the Geno bent forward, bringing every gun in his arsenal to bear. The Fury rocked back as pulse cannons and heavy artillery rounds both slammed into it`s chest, halting the previous speed it`d displayed in it`s agile bladed dance and leaving Vega to have to work to recover, which he did with a masterful skill beyond his years in every way, bringing the Fury to speed sideways out of the line of fire and then booster jumping straight up when Kale tried to follow.   
  
To the mutual surprise of both brothers, Kale didn`t predict what Vega was about to do.   
  
In mid-air, Vega changed course, zooming down to the ground in front of his brother and lashing out with a virtual whirlwind of lethal, super heated chain-blades, scoring a direct slash across the right shoulder of the Geno Saurer. It was superficial damage, at best, but it did the trick thanks to Kale`s reflexes.   
  
The smaller of the two tyrannids lunged back, the larger rooted itself firmly to the floor, saws twisting into a pair of veritable tornadoes of whirling death in the process.   
  
"What`s wrong Kale, can`t hit me anymore?"   
  
"You`ve improved a bit. Not enough though," Kale growled out in reply.   
  
Both Zoids crouched low and prepared to attack again...   
  
  
_ There are too god damned many of them!   
  
_ "I think I realized that by now!" Bit shouted back at his Organoid, even as the Liger rocked from yet another volley of impacts across it`s now brutalized body. Armor that had once glistened white had been tarnished a solid, charred black, blast marks were visible all over the once glorious Zoid, and even the pilot was starting to show wear and tear, sweat running in buckets down his face and chest, and everywhere else. Zeke was in agony, a red battle haze having overcome him by now.   
  
Dodging wouldn`t have been a problem in most conditions, even under the Liger`s presently outnumbered, outgunned status, Bit could have managed to dodge at least half of the incoming shots - the catch was that he could only manage such a task when not surrounded on all sides.   
  
And the bigger catch on top of this was that reinforcements kept pouring in by the truckload. Bit could have _sworn_ that he`d taken down at least fifty Rev Raptors and twenty Helcats -   
  
"**_STRIKE LASER CLAW!!!_**"   
  
- along with the newly annihilated Scout Fox, the severed head vaporizing under the force of the Liger Zero`s golden claw, killing it`s pilot like so many others with a relentless ferocity that could be only passingly described at best.   
  
_ Behind us!   
  
_ "Way _ahead of you_!"   
  
With ever more speed and agility, the Liger whipped into a barrel roll into the air, even though it had been standing completely still. The incoming Rev Raptor - still airborn as well - met with a sharpened, furious end, the still-glowing gold claws of the Zero stabbing ruthlessly into it`s stomach. Clawed feet and sturdy legs flew by the larger Zoid`s head, scraping against well-tested armor with a shower of ever more sparks and flame, only to be slammed down onto it`s back against it`s own momentum as the Liger completed it`s barrel roll.   
  
And an explosion rippled beneath the proud fighting machine, Zeke and the Liger both roared with a defiance palpable only in dreams and for all of a second, the attack stopped.   
  
But only for a second. Gunshots broke the silence like glass against a nuclear bomb, all Hell was breaking loose and Bit Cloud was right at it`s center. The Liger rocked, literally _hundreds_ of explosions tearing across it`s sleekly bulky frame, and at the same time, Bit let out a scream of pain.   
  
One of the explosions was the explosion of a round crashing through the side of the cockpit, tearing back out the opposite end. Bit himself was untouched by the actual slug - it was the size of a water melon at least - but the debris to follow took it`s toll and then some. Tortured glass and metal sliced through leather, cloth and skin, and in a second, Bit Cloud was transformed from a mere Zoid warrior facing death to a battle wounded soldier on the front lines of a war he couldn`t win.   
  
Blood streaked down his face from a gash just above one eyebrow, one of his cheeks was cut from the base of the jawbone to less than an inch of one lip, another cut had scythed it`s way through his jacket and shirt, leaving a shallow, bloody wound down across his lower ribcage, stopped at the inner side of the left arm of the safety harness, while another series of cuts ran across the outer side of his left arm.   
  
_ Bit!   
  
_ "Keep fighting..."   
  
Another explosion, the Liger tumbled onto it`s side in pain only to roll over, and Bit paused only long enough to yank the shrapnel out of his harness, spit out some of his own blood and then brought the Zoid back up, instantly gunning down another Helcat in a blaze of flame and smoke.   
  
Another explosion again though - no, wait, _four_ of them wracked the Zoid in pain, and it went down again onto it`s stomach.   
  
"_**Keep fighting**_!"   
>  
_ I can`t keep this up for much longer...   
  
_ Again, Bit willed the Liger to rise, and again it came up in response, springing over another salvo of high powered, explosive slugs and corkscrewing through the air. With new invigoration, the thrusters that had formerly been knocked out on it`s back sprung to life again, shining a feral blue as it forced the Zoid down, almost _against_ the whims of gravity. A pair of Rev Raptors and a Helcat paid the price - the Helcat getting crushed under the Liger`s weight, the Helcat`s exploding from getting shot in the throats and mouths a second later.   
  
The stabilizers glowed a hot red, but the Zero lunged forward again and literally sawed the head right off of yet another Rev Raptor with a clean strike, carrying it through the air even further, landing behind that same Zoid and biting into the cockpit of another Helcat with a gush of crimson across one of the Liger`s sabered teeth.   
  
Again, the Liger flew off of it`s feet to the side, bouncing off of the canyon walls and skidding down to the ground. Bit, bloodied, sweating and caught up in the frenzy of battle tried to force the Zoid to rise again though.   
  
_ I... Can`t... Move...   
  
_ "**_KEEP FIGHTING!!!_**"   
  
Almost in response to Bit`s words alone, the Liger unsteadily rose back up, defying it`s would be killers out of nothing but sheer, unadulterated spite alone. In surprise, the firing of the enemy Zoids all but ceased in an instant, and the charred, brutalized Liger creaked forward, sparks flying like guysers out of every stabilizer on it`s body, blood - _human blood_ - staining one of it`s sabered fangs, the pilot barely clinging to both his sanity and his consciousness.   
  
And then...   
  
  
They were all frozen instantly by the time they had set foot on the ground to start rushing up the hill. Every last one of them was held in place by nothing but the force of two ancient minds, two inhumanly powerful wills that were even supressing the movements of the Zoids that were backing them. Atop the hill, Fiona Alysse Linette-Fleiheit and the woman known only as Riese stood together, hand in hand in a powerful gesture. The tattoos on their foreheads, the ones that signified their station in Ancient Zoidian society were both glowing a vague mixture of watery purple and a solid white background, outlined a thin blue.   
  
"We were used once," Riese began, though Fiona continued:   
  
"Centuries ago, by a man of equal evil and intelligence,"   
  
"_And_ equal foolishness. He sought to control a power beyond measure-"   
  
"- And it consumed him in the process."   
  
  
Vega let out a cry of war, ducking the Fury beneath several incoming shots from the Geno Saurer, but Kale was just too quick for him once again, jumping over the six laser saws and smashing the Geno`s tail across his the other Zoid`s head, only for the Fury`s tail-blades to rotate upward, raking down across the smaller Zoid`s gut.   
  
"Payback time!"   
  
"Keep dreaming," Kale replied, stabilizing the Fury just in time for his landing, only to realize an instant too late that the ground was faulty. Stone cracked and gave way in an instant, and the Geno Saurer promptly yielded to the floor`s collapse, only to be followed seconds later by the Razorwind. For a harsh moment, both Zoids tumbled down through levels of flooring before finally coming to a full stop, on the bottom floor of the entire temple, in utter darkness aside from the light that they themselves created.   
  
Without another word, the two charged each other again, thrusters flaring in the dark, claws, saws and guns all blazing hot colors through the shadows as two brothers sought to kill each other.   
  
  
As one, the two brought their free hands up and then harshly waved them down at the men and women scattered about the base of the hill. As a result, every last one of them went flying dozens of feet up and through the air instantly, thrown around like rag dolls before a telekinetic surge of power from the two Ancient Zoidians.   
  
"The world has learned it`s lessons from the deeds of men like Gunther Prozen and Hiltz, it doesn`t want to repeat them," Fiona began this time, and Riese picked up at the perfect moment, eerily matching her old friend`s voice perfectly, word for word, tone for tone.   
  
"And neither do we. We were pawns then, but we won`t be pawns again. Not to Prozen, not to Hiltz."   
  
"And not to Rommel. The time of would-be dictators and world destroyers has ended, peace must reign."   
  
"And only fools would seek to cause anything else."   
  
It was at that moment, as most of the downed soldiers started trying to get up again, that both women held out their hands in unison, drawing a pair of pistols at random from two of their would-be imprisoners.   
  
  
"No..." Bit muttered out, though the Liger`s cry of pain shut out his own quiet plea to the sight before him. He wasn`t there, no, but he was watching it somehow. From a distance, yes, but still.   
  
  
Now they spoke as one, the guns dropping to their sides as the hands they`d clasped together rose up, held high between them like an ancient bridge.   
  
"Never again," they began as one, slowly starting to raise their guns at once.   
  
"Will we be used as pawns by Prozen, Hilz, or anyone else."   
  
The guns and the hands holding them continued, until finally they started to slow down even further, approaching their final destination without pause, without regret.   
  
"As our age comes to it`s end..."   
  
  
"Don`t do it..." The blonde begged relentlessly, the Liger issuing another painful roar as explosions tore into what remained of the armor on it`s back.   
  
"Please... Don`t... I need you right now, Granny..." Bit pleaded, watching everything like a prisoner of war being brainwashed into thinking like his own captors. He was powerless to stop it, he was probably going to die himself soon, but he didn`t want his only true family dying with him either.   
  
"Put the gun down..."   
  
  
"So, does a new one begin."   
  
And with that, the guns found themselves leveled into either side of the two women`s head. With no hesitation, they both pulled the trigger.   
  
  
"**_FIONA!!!_**"   
  
  
**_ RIESE!!!   
  
_** The fighting halted instantly, Vega paused from the sheer emotional agony of his Organoid. Specular`s distress was so palpable that even Shadow seemed stunned, but Kale would have none of it, making his attack even while the Fury was motionless before him. A hard slam of every ounce of the Geno Saurer`s weight and the Razorwind staggered back, lashing out again only to find the Geno`s claws shooting through the close distance to hit the Fury in the head several times and then draw back.   
  
The fighting continued from there, but Vega was now at a clear disadvantage.   
  
  
In the cockpit of the Liger Zero, as Zeke finally gave in to his own pain and stress with a fit of what sounded almost like sobbing, Bit Cloud was dead silent. Power levels across the Zoid fluctuated violently, but this mattered very little to the bloody mess in the cockpit.   
  
His head was hung low, his eyes were clenched tightly shut, blood ran down in droves across one side of his face, slicked even further with a burgeoning flood of grief stricken tears, added to by sweat. His jaw was painfully held tight, lips curled in an angry, mourning snarl and his hands gripped the controls like a dying man gripping the reigns of a horse. His nostrils flared briefly in a snarl, he was trembling so violently that his body looked as though it was threatening to give out completely and for the third or fourth time in one hellish night, and for the second time in one day, everything _stopped_.   
  
And in that dead silence, everyone there could testify to hearing something that sounded like the snap of a thin twig.   
  
And then, like a hellbent predator, the Liger Zero rose once more. Zeke had nothing to do with it this time, the Liger`s own core didn`t even have anything to do with it, the Zoid shouldn`t have even been able to _move_ - but it _did_.   
  
Every system was completely _shot_, the stabilizers weren`t functioning, the Zoid was practically dead in almost every way but the part about turning to stone. In the cockpit though, that was the source of everything...   
  
Bit Cloud slowly looked up, holding his head up from the mournful bow he`d been in before. In unison, every other Zoid in the canyon took a step back.   
  
Power seemed to flood out of the young man`s body, through every single cut that had been inflicted upon him. His blood tinged a magnificent gold, looking like a tattoo of some kind. The green irises of his eyes kept fading in and out, leaving only white to surround his dilated pupils for increasingly lengthy periods of time, but soon, he seemed to fade back to a deranged normal.   
  
But that was when the Liger itself started to tinge golden in increasingly fast pulses of light, wobbling forward on unsteady legs like a drunkard. Stabilizers started functioning again, black scorch marks started fading away, armor that was gone seemed to rebuild on it`s own, ammunition that was spent somehow replaced itself, the blood staining one fang dried away and in a matter of seconds, almost all of the Liger Zero was completely repaired as if untouched in the slightest of ways. With one noticable exception...   
  
The cockpit was still brutalized. It`s bloodied, angry pilot was still staring malignantly at the horde of Zoids that had so dared to hold him back from stopping the tragedy that had just taken place.   
  
And as the cockpit itself slowly started to heal back up, propelled solely by this unknown power to defy destiny and alter reality on a traumatized whim, the Liger brought it`s head back and repeated history one more time, as it had in the same battleground so long ago, with a different pilot this time.   
  
It roared.   
  
Alone, defiant, standing against a flood tide of enemies who seemed to know no surrender, no retreat and no mercy, it roared.   
  
Confronted with the overwhelming force of a foe like none other in it`s recent history, the Ultimate X Liger Zero _roared_ like an angry king at the top of the food chain looking down upon an insurrectionist attempt by his own lunch.   
  
"I won`t let you get away with this," Bit growled out through tightly grit teeth, murder and revenge burning like twin, green suns built around all consuming black holes in his eyes. The blood drooling down his face had slowed now, his wounds had caked shut, but the sight remained a terrifying one. Tears were still streaking, sweat was still pouring, and as the last few inches of the cockpit sealed shut, good as new once more, his voice echoed silently, if only for Zeke to hear.   
  
It was the same tone of voice used by both Kale Obscura and Bill Chapman in the moments that they had each gone over the edge. It was the voice of the Grim Reaper himself.   
  
"Let`s get `em, partner."   
  
And with those words, history repeated itself once more. Like Van Fleiheit himself, so very long ago but in the same canyon and in almost the exact same conditions, Bit Cloud reared back and screamed with a fire that forced even the Organoid, Zeke, out of his dazed, grief filled stupor of pain and suffering, rousing him into the fighting spirit one more time...   
  
"**_IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!_**"   
  


_ End Chapter One  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** _"And so... It begins..."_  
  
Let the Hell continue breaking loose :P Expect the next chapter when it`s finished.  
  
As always, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	2. Prayer

  
  
**Foreword:** Listen to Disturbed - Prayer while reading this.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
_ Prayer_   
  
  
  


An explosion of high speed blades literally plowing through a wall in a vain attempt to strike a rapidly moving target. Specular was still completely unresponsive, the Fury itself appeared sluggish to him, but only because Vega was fighting at a level that the systems were hard pressed to respond to without the boost that came from the Organoid that had permanently bound itself to the core.   
  
Kale was still at an advantage, all over again.   
  
Vega spat out a curse under his breath and whipped around, resolving to cover his weakness with a simple flare of overkilling anything in sight.   
  
"Helpless as ever," Kale stated amusedly, ducking under a swipe of three of the saws and then kneeing the Fury right in the stomach. The larger Zoid slid back from the blow, punching through the same wall it had just cut to ribbons a few seconds earlier. The younger of the two was resolved though, he wouldn`t fall to Kale`s headgames this time. Instead, Vega was going to try one of his own...   
  
"I can still beat you," the younger brother stated with confidence that was balanced precariously on the edge of a knife.   
  
"_Sure_, you can. In your dreams," the older brother replied with an utterly false amusement born of something that sat between madness and true evil.   
  
"Remember what you said that time?" He asked over the creaking of tortured stone and the falling of shattered debris as the Geno Saurer padded it`s way into the enormous room that Vega had been thrown into.   
  
"What did I say, wizkid?"   
  
** [**_A flash on the simulator screen. At three years old, Vega Obscura had the mentality of a boy two or three times his own age, with the intelligence to match. He`d been called a genius at least fifteen times in his own short memory, but this? This terrified him to an extent. The TV wasn`t supposed to be something you could interact with! It was dead!   
  
"Stop being such a chicken," a familiar, older voice ordered. It was the 'middle' kid`s voice, Rayth Takahori. Vega didn`t like Rayth, Rayth didn`t like anyone and he wasn`t afraid to show his apparent contempt whenever he was given the chance. "If you can pilot a Zoid like they said you can, there`s no point in being afraid of a freaking simulator."   
  
"I`ve never done this before..."   
  
Another voice chimed in from outside the pod. Markedly more cheerful, it was also a great deal more supportive.   
  
"Don`t worry Vega, you can do it," Kale stated as a fact more than a suggestion. Whatever it was in his voice, it steeled little Vega`s resolve enough to actually take the controls for the virtual Saber Tiger and start piloting around in the battlefield. Of course he would fail this first simulation, he was only three after all, but the seeds had been sewn, and that was all that mattered._**]**   
  
_ Another dream that will never come true  
Just to compliment your sorrow  
Another life that I`ve taken from you  
A gift to add on to your pain and suffering  
  
_ "Shut up," Kale ordered with a growl, pulling the trigger without hesitation. Shots rang out in the darkness, each of them missing as the laser saws and the eyes that were the only real indication of where the Razorwind Fury was located simply... Blinked out. Kale growled annoyedly leering at his scanner while flipping the optics over to infrared. Fighting in the dark had never been something Kale excelled at, especially not when he had to rely on things like infrared or even scanners. One didn`t show the surroundings as more than vague transparencies, the other didn`t show them at all since it was geared towards tracking Zoid movemenets, core signatures and little else.   
  
There were other systems, but neither brother was that well versed in fighting with them.   
  
Vega on the other hand, had always had a natural aptitude for two things in specific when it came to fighting: Ambushes and fighting blind or in the dark. He was a specialist when it came to both, more one than the other, and naturally, they complimented each other quite well.   
  
He displayed these proficiencies in kind when Kale finally managed to get a lock on him, only to realize a bit too late that the Geno Saurer was up against a wall with Vega behind...   
  
I was wondering when you`d notice that.   
  
_ "You could have the fucking decency to help out here!"   
  
_ Twin roars, the first louder than the other. Six laser saws ignited with a burst of blue flame, each moving in a pair of triple circles and triangular patterns while homing in on where the Geno Saurer was standing. With all of a second to spare, Kale went on the defensive, firing up his thrusters and shooting off the ground, plowing straight up through the ceiling of the enormous temple room, moving into a wide, jet-powered backflip while Vega`s attack hit home, slicing through millennia of ancient stonework and craftsmanship in a hail of shattered, burnt debris.   
  
"Damn," the younger of the two growled at himself.   
  
That was when he flipped his optics back on and glanced at one of the smaller screens, which was showing Kale as the backflip completed. The Geno Saurer was still in mid-air, but it was holding itself aloft in an odd way, jumpjets that weren`t really meant for such a task executing it anyway as the tail went completely rigid and the Zoid started ascending backwards, it`s mouth opening up wide while the barrel extended out ever so slightly between it`s jaws.   
  
"... That`s... That`s insane!"   
  
"It`s only insane if it doesn`t _**work**_!"   
  
With that, Kale pulled the trigger and fired the charged particle cannon in mid-air. If not for Shadow, the recoil alone would have shattered the entire Zoid like glass from the head back to the tip of the tail. As it stood, the beam lashed out like a superpowered shuttle thruster, pushing the Geno Saurer back and higher while the beam pulsed terrifyingly through the air, tearing through the floor that kept Vega out of Kale`s direct line of sight.   
  
As for Vega?   
  
He looked up in time to watch the ceiling completely shatter around the incoming beam...   
  
_ Another truth you can never believe  
Has crippled you completely  
  
_** [**_"You`re lying. He can`t be dead," a seven year old Kale Obscura stated in utter disbelief. Not too far away sat an unresponsive two year old Vega, who was mostly just playing with his toys. It was probably the only time in his life that he`d ever be __just_ a kid, the same for his older sibling. Before them stood a clearly remorseful, obviously upset Sarah Obscura, and in the room over, Altiel Tairis.   
  
"He is. An... Accident with his car on the way to pick you boys up for his visit..."   
  
Something was off with the look in her eyes. Even at the age of seven, Kale was exceptionally perceptive about people, he had a gift for it.   
  
"Are... You sure... That he`s dead?"   
  
"Yes. The accident was bad, at least two other cars were trashed in the process."   
  
Something off. Like her remorse was lined with vanishing ink or something.   
  
"You`re lying," the boy said in a moment of aweful clarity, tears that had been threatening to spill out drying instantly from the mere shock of his own words. Sarah stumbled for something to say, but the look her son was throwing at her completely drilled through any facade she could try to put up. No response came to his accusation, but none was needed.   
  
With a cough, Sarah stood, straightened herself out and walked over to Vega, picking the unresponsive child up and leaving without so much as a word to her older son. It was sort of a way of saying 'don`t tell anyone.'   
  
And then she was gone. Vega was gone. Kale stood alone in the bedroom he`d mostly shared with his two year old brother - even though Vega acted more like a three or four year old and was only recently out of diapers(which was odd in and of itself).   
  
Outside though, Altiel had gone unnoticed by Sarah, somehow. Younger, a bit more lean than he would be in the coming years, he was still quite the schemer. What better way to start chipping away at a woman he knew would be a rival someday than to sew the seeds of descent into her own children?   
  
With a devious smile, Altiel cracked the door open.**]**   
  
_ All the cries you`re beginning to hear  
Trapped in your mind and the sound is deafening   
  
_** [**_"I`m starting to hear things," Kale muttered dryly. He was ten now, an accomplished Zoid Warrior and a well known up-and-comer, just like the youth that sat not too far from him.   
  
"What do you mean?" Rayth asked with his usual cynical tone. At age twelve, he was only two years older than Kale, yet still couldn`t touch the younger as far as combat in a Zoid went. They`d become friends of a sort not too long ago, the result of being stuck together for battle training as a two-member team. Though Rayth wasn`t exactly sociable, Kale happened to be patient and understang enough to make up for it - probably why Rayth was starting to make other friends whenever he went around the 'normal kids' in simulator training.   
  
"I mean... I`m starting to hear Zoids."   
  
"You can`t hear Zoids, Kale. They`re machines, tools for battle and nothing more."   
  
"Maybe if you`d stop being such a cynic you`d see that they`re actually alive," Kale pointed out in the same tone that would one day be used by Bit Cloud to argue almost the same point with Altiel and later, Pierce. "None of them want this and they`re starting to show up in my dreams..."   
  
"See a psychiatrist."   
  
"I can`t. We don`t have any and my mom doesn`t believe me..."   
  
"Neither do I, for that matter," Rayth said, tightening the strap on his left glove for the umpteenth time in the conversation. Kale sighed and shook his head._**]**   
  
_ Let me enlighten you  
This is the way I pray  
  
_ Sub-atomic flames shattered through floors that had withstood the forces of time and man alike, briefly turning the entire world a hot white for several seconds as the Geno Saurer punched out of the temple in reverse, held aloft by it`s jumpjets and propelled backwards by the charged particle cannon. After several seconds of prolonged flight though, the jumpjets finally gave out and the tyrannid started to fall from the air, now located far above the incinerating remains of the temple itself, which was fast becoming nothing more than a fried out, ever-expanding crater around a dome of multi-colored fire, hot enough to literally glass the dirt around it.   
  
With a coldness in his eyes, Kale released the trigger of the charged particle cannon, allowing the Geno to continue falling to the ground at full reverse, landing with a hard skid that kicked up an equally large trail of dust.   
  
Excellent move, Shadow commented as an afterthought, apparently out of his haze and able to do more than just reinforce the Geno Saurer`s endurance.   
  
Kale only smirked, a grim, murderous twinkle in his eyes.   
  
_ Living just isn`t hard enough  
Burn me alive, inside  
  
_ "He`s not finished yet," the older brother exclaimed, his voice perhaps showing a mixture of a calm rage and a lethal determination.   
  
And that was when a black speck appeared within the midst of the explosion, fading away as fire turned to smoke. It was about three seconds later that Kale`s ears faintly registered a dull hum, and then...   
  
_ Another nightmare about to come true  
Will manifest tomorrow   
  
_ In the middle of a canyon once clear of everything, even vegetation and insect-life, the silence was shattered one last time by a terrible roar.   
  
Alone, proud, angry and defiant all at once, the Liger Zero stood atop a newly destroyed Rev Raptor, the last Zoid that had dared to stand against it`s murderous onslaught.   
  
** [**_"**IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!**"_**]**   
  
Blood literally poured from the Liger`s fangs, bits of machinery dangling around once-golden teeth, various types of machine lubricants splattered all over the majestic killing machine`s once-golden claws. Smoke still drifted up in whisps from everything in sight, the slaughter had been absolutely ruthless to no ends. It was like nothing that had been seen in centuries, even the legend that had been Raven would have been scarce to comprehend the amount of blood shed.   
  
** [**_"Where`d he go? Where the hell did he go?!"   
  
A golden swipe of four claws from above, the cockpit was torn open and the pilot vaporized into a disgusting, evaporating cloud of blood insantly, his bottom half tearing out of the seat from the sheer force of the blow. The Liger Zero touched down with perfect balance -_**]**   
  
It had been so intense that most of the now-dead or dying Zoid cores hadn`t even petrified into stone yet, leaving hauntingly crushed memories of once proud fighting machines.   
  
** [**_- and in a terrifying instant, three more Rev Raptors and a Helcat all went down, torn apart by the Liger`s dual shot cannon, which had practically turned into some kind of death machine in it`s own right._**]**   
  
And in the cockpit...   
  
** [**_"**I`LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!!!**"_**]**   
  
Alone. Bloodier than most war veterans. Hyperventilating.   
  
** [**_"**STRIKE LASER CLAW!**"   
  
In a blinding flash of gold, a Helcat and **five** Rev Raptors were completely ripped apart, cut so perfectly that the breaks were smoother than glass._**]**   
  
Sweating. Crying. _Laughing._   
  
** [**_A scream as the Liger literally tore through three more Rev Raptors like an insane bullet, it`s claws tearing a Command Wolf completely in half as it landed, it`s teeth biting into the cockpit of another Helcat and tearing the head right off._**]**   
  
Bit Cloud had gone over the edge.   
  
_ Another love that I`ve taken from you  
Lost in time on the edge of suffering  
  
_ "**_WHO`S NEXT?!_**"   
  
_ Another taste of evil I breed  
Will level you completely  
  
_ The smoke cloud literally shattered into a hellish whirlwind around a charged particle beam, obviously fired at the absolute limit of the Fury`s power. Kale skipped a heartbeat in surprise, but while his heart could skip, his reflexes couldn`t. The Geno Saurer dodged to the left, almost perfectly bursting out of the line of fire while the beam gouged straight through the terrain like a knife, soaring off into the skies a few seconds later before thinning to a complete halt.   
  
The smoke cleared and the Razorwind stood alone in what had once been the bottom half of a double-pyramid, all six blades working in a pair of sideways whirlwinds, held out to either side of the larger Zoid as it leered up ominously to the Geno, which had only just managed to land.   
  
"Dodge all you want, Kale," Vega muttered to himself threateningly. "One of them _will_ hit you in the end."   
  
_ Bring to life everything that you fear  
Live in the dark and the world is threatening   
  
_** [**_The gaming room. In normal conditions, during normal hours, the video game room in the Backdraft Group`s recreation area was taken up by kids and adults of all ages. It even hosted a smaller room that served as home to the facilities six arcade-level simulators, devices that had been amped up a bit and were often used by the younger 'early start' classes - the five groups that the Kings had been picked from - as basic training.   
  
Tonight though, the room served a different purpose.   
  
Six year old Vega Obscura was playing every game in the entire area. Over and over again. From pinball to thunderball to shooters to strategy games to everything else - everything **but** the simulators. He was mostly alone, his face was dampened with tears and his eyes looked more than a little bloodshot.   
  
It was three in the morning. While yes, most of the games were on all night and the room itself never closed, it was strange for anyone to be playing this late, let alone a kid. Almost everyone else but the nightshift was asleep by now, even his mother had given up on trying to reign him in for the evening after the fifteenth attempt, while Stigma wasn`t available and no one else cared enough to bother.   
  
The reason he was up as late, the same reason that he had been crying almost every time something died in the game, was also the reason why the Five Kings had dropped to four.   
  
Earlier that night, Vega had accidentally killed Randal Clark in the middle of a Zoid battle.   
  
The two had both been using Saber Tigers, but, while Clark was skilled and experienced enough to hold back despite himself, Vega had not been. Dummy ammunition, yes, but when the claw of a seventy-eight ton war machine slams down from above at over a hundred miles an hour into the glass of a cockpit, just about nothing was fake about the damage it caused. Clark had literally been turned into a glob of guts, goo, broken bone and other suitably bad things, and Vega had only realized what he`d done a few seconds after the fact.   
  
It had crushed him quite a bit. The youngest member of the Five Kings wasn`t someone who was very prone to being able to kill someone. Hell, none of them but Rayth seemed to have the lack of a conscience required for it.   
  
Several squeezes of the game`s trigger later, a game over sign flared onto the screen. Vega twitched, then jerked as a hand laid itself onto the shoulder of his short sleeved shirt.   
  
"It`s time for bed, Vega," Kale stated somberly. At eleven, he looked and sometimes acted like a man in his late fifties, forced to carry the growing burden of having one friend, trying to be a genuine rolemodel to an increasingly despondant, strange little brother and at the same time avoid blowing his mother`s cover by screwing up, as Altiel had threatened. Once, he`d trusted the man, now? Now Kale would have probably sooner spat on him in the arctic than urinated on him in the desert.   
  
"Why?"   
  
"I don`t know why, Vega. The only thing you can do is hope he`s in a better place now."   
  
"I didn`t mean to..."   
  
"I know that. He knows that too, he just can`t tell you himself," Kale lied sweetly, if only to try and cheer his brother out of becoming a depressed, moping piece of goo by the time he was seven. Slowly, Vega turned his head to look up over his shoulder, those eyes hauntingly somber in their mood. In them, Kale saw something reflected back at him, what it was, he didn`t know.   
  
It terrified him though.   
  
"I don`t think I wanna be a Zoid pilot anymore..."   
  
"Sure you do, kid," Kale replied automatically, somehow maintaining the cheery, strong facade. "It`s just that things like this shake the heck out of us, right?"   
  
"I guess."   
  
"Wanna get something to eat? You look like you haven`t had anything all day, maybe some pizza`ll cheer ya up."   
  
"Sure," Vega said with a shrug, turning away from the game. The late night cafeterias were a blessed thing, at least now the younger brother wouldn`t be exposed to fake death from the screens of all the video games, or the racket of a pool table that could sound eerily similar to the racket of a gun going off. Inwardly, Kale sighed to himself.   
  
He was only eleven, and yet he had to deal with issues most grown men couldn`t handle. It was slowly eating away at him, piece by piece.****_]   
  
_ Let me enlighten you  
This is the way I pray  
  
_ A roar of jet engines, the Razorwind shot up out of the crater at full speed, the dual whirlwinds ceasing as each laser saw swiped downward at the Geno Saurer, flinging of blade-shaped slices of energy, eerily reminiscent of the type of attack the Death Saurer`s tail could perform. Kale dodged again, the ground beneath him was promptly cut to burnt up ribbons, but the Razorwind continued descending. It was only then, Kale realized, that Vega had become good enough to play off of the older fighter`s own moves, and again, he had to work to dodge.   
  
The Geno burst to the side, the Fury landed right on top of where it had been standing and Kale had to work for yet _another_ dodge, twisting out of the way of the larger Zoid`s tailblades, nailing the Fury right in the hip with the Geno`s own tail in the process. The Fury roared defiantly and stood against the attack, reversing the course of it`s blades and promptly stabbing into the space just above the Geno Saurer`s hip, narrowly missing vitals and just about everything else and then drawing back out harshly, causing a shower of small sparks as a result.   
  
Pitiful. Fight harder.   
  
"I don`t see you doing jack shit," Kale replied angrily at the Organoid, blazing up into the air and turning around to face the Razorwind as he landed, just when the other Zoid turned around.   
  
"You shouldn`t keep trying to hit me at point blank, idiot," Vega commented, taking the advantage in every way -   
  
"I`ll remember that, twit."   
  
- for all of a split second before Kale opened up with his head guns, spraying the Razorwind Fury with pulse cannon shots. The larger Zoid rocked unexpectedly, and Vega knowingly condemned himself for being overconfident.   
  
Much better.   
  
_ "I`d say something like 'thank you,' but I`d be lying."   
  
_ I know. Exactly why I like you.   
  
_ Living just isn`t hard enough  
Burn me alive, inside  
  
_** [**_Alfred Torson was dead. Suicide. Apparently the stresses of having to go through as much combat training were too much for some people to handle, and Alfred was one of them. His death hadn`t struck the same cord in most that Clark`s had caused. A bit of a manic depressive by nature, Torson had often made moves in battle that made it seem like he **wanted** to die in the first place. At age twenty-two, he`d spent all of his teens - a time when most people snuck out at night, got drunk illegally, stirred up trouble and basically took the concept of 'try again' to the extreme.   
  
None of the Four Kings could stand it, Torson was just the first to drop. Even Vega was starting to crack and he wasn`t even in his teens yet, but the other two...   
  
"We shouldn`t be doing this," Kale mumbled out under his breath, flinging a rope out of the window and anchoring it with a mountain climber`s knot to a dresser a few seconds later.   
  
"What do you suggest? Hijacking a Zoid and busting out?" Rayth growled back in his usual tone, having literally kicked the bars on his window out. It had obviously worn him down to do it - the things were made to hold back a team of fully grown men, but Rayth Takahori was quite adept at picking out structural weakpoints. A few dozen stolen kitchen knives, taken in such a slow moving pattern that no one would think of it as anything more than missing kitchenware and nothing else, along with his own right leg and the bars were gone.   
  
"I`d prefer it to trying to get away on foot," the younger of the two replied. Rayth was the older member of the escape attempt, and at nineteen, he was also the oldest member of the Three Kings that remained, not to mention the most ruthless.   
  
"Stealing a Zoid isn`t out of the question, but I doubt we`ll get the chance. Now stop bitching and get climbing," Rayth muttered, grabbing onto the rope and giving it a hard yank or two before diving out of the window and sliding down. The burn to his hands was painful, but he didn`t have time to be seen.   
  
"Shit!" He spat out in little more than a whisper, stopping himself by squeezing his poots to the rope and catching on the knot at the bottom. Kale leaned out of the window a few seconds later, peering down.   
  
"The rope`s not long enough!" Rayth shouted, trying to control his voice.   
  
"Any ideas then?" Kale yelled back, crouching on the windowsill. Rayth looked around in response, trying to pick out something that could save their little plan. He **had** to be free, even if it meant plowing through everything on the damn base to do it...   
  
And speaking of the base, it was one of the larger ones operated by the Backdraft Group. A single black building that had six large hangs built at it`s base, the building itself built partially into a mountain and an additional Whale King hangar - one of the only ones of it`s kind - placed into the enormous saucer that Kale and Vega`s rooms were located on.   
  
Rayth had descended all the way down to just a few dozen yards beneath the saucer, that gave him just enough reach to possibly throw himself at a specific glass window near the bottom. It would hopefully break his impact enough that landing wouldn`t hurt too badly, but he didn`t think it possible on his own weight. However with Kale`s weight added to Rayth`s own...   
  
"Climb down!" He shouted, and Kale just obeyed. He had a somewhat bad habit of trusting Rayth a bit too much for his own good.   
  
Several minutes went by and the two young men were both dangling precariously at the bottom of the rope, hanging on opposite sides of the same level, the rope dangling between them.   
  
"Now what?" Kale asked.   
  
"Start shifting your weight in tune with mine. We`re going to try and swing through that glass window there," he pointed to it, and Kale almost looked hesitant for a second. "You can go back up if you want, I`m leaving regardless," Rayth muttered annoyedly.   
  
Not another word spoken, both started to shift their weight in unison swinging left to right until finally -   
  
"Now!"   
  
- letting go of the rope and going flying. Rayth went a little higher but in the end, both slammed into the same pane of glass at the same second, shattering it completely and having the unwitting luck of falling down a few yards more to the hard ground below. For most people the fall would have killed them, even Rayth was jarred half-senseless, but Kale just shook his head and stood up, dusting himself off and rubbing over the bruising on one shoulder.   
  
It was then that the alarm went off.   
  
"**Shit**."_**]**   
  
_ Living my life`s not hard enough  
Take everything away  
  
_ The fighting had shifted in Kale`s favor again, and it hadn`t shifted pleasantly either. Again and again, the Razorwind was forced to dodge out of the way, lacking in the way of any long ranged weaponry while the Geno Saurer kept as distant as possible, picking away at Vega like a machine gunner trying to take down a high speed, unarmed tank in the middle of an utterly open field.   
  
_ "Whenever you feel like helping!"_ Vega spat in his thoughts, though Specular didn`t even bother with a response. It almost sounded like the Organoid was crying somehow. Why she was doing so, Vega didn`t know. He wouldn`t have understood anyway. Again, the Razorwind burst off the ground, a stream of pulse cannon shots impacting the very dirt it`d been standing on a second later.   
  
And then Vega yelled out in surprise, finding that he`d jumped right into the line of Kale`s back-mounted guns, practically earning the pair of high impact rounds that slammed into the Fury`s chest as a result. The larger Zoid tumbled from the air in response, landing with a hard crash on it`s stomach before springing back up unsteadily. The two had been fighting for an hour now - at the bare minimum. Maybe longer, maybe shorter, but it was a fight that had dragged on and worn away at the stamina and endurance of both combatants.   
  
Vega and Kale just wanted to win now. They weren`t trading insults, they weren`t trying to draw each other out into a verbal exchange that might give away a weakness or two, they were just trying kill each other. Nothing in particular mattered, strategy was limited at best. It was coming down to which one had the will to outlast the other, and even that seemed deadlocked.   
  
Six uniform slashes, followed by five dodges and a roar of pain as the sixth laser slash hit home, slicing across one of the Geno`s shoulders and cutting a deep gash into one cheek, passing along and then slicing off a piece of the back mounted cannons. An explosion followed, namely the cannon itself going sky high since the attack had managed to hit close enough to the weapon`s secondary power plant.   
  
The Fury lunged forward, the Geno Saurer jumped into a backflip. Laser saws flared, the Geno`s tail struck home on the Fury`s chin, and even as the larger Zoid faltered back, clawed hands shot forward and grappled onto the main arms that held all six of the laser saws together. A split second passed by, and Kale burst back and into the air, yanking Vega along for the ride before electricuting him outright.   
  
The younger Obscura _and_ his Organoid both screamed in pain, shared by the agonized Fury, all three being slammed down into the ground after several seconds, which was exactly when the Geno Saurer landed.   
  
Two clacking sounds filled Vega`s ears. The world went silent instantly, everything seemed to go in slow motion.   
  
_ Return to me   
  
_** [**_"It`s not fair..." Kale thought._**]**   
  
_ Leave me no one   
  
_** [**_Four Geno Saurers stood before him. All were unclaimed, and the true prize, the Berserk Fury, had been given to his brother.   
  
"I`m the better pilot, the quicker thinker," he thought annoyedly, glaring from side to side. Rayth`s recent disappearance after their utterly __failed_ escape attempt hadn`t helped his already de-stabilizing mental conditions. Death threats and an attempted murder hadn`t helped his standing with the Backdraft Group, and now, now he was already seeing Sarah`s plan.   
  
"She just needs a pawn, not a son," he growled to himself in thought.**]**   
  
_ Turn me, return to me   
  
_** [**_"I got picked!" A young voice shouted into the room, blaring out that small, almost imperceptable snapping sound that came from everywhere at once, echoed briefly by the steel walls of the oversized, mostly empty room.   
  
"They`re making me the pilot of the Berserk Fury!"_**]**   
  
_ Cast aside   
  
_** [**_"Hunting time."   
  
Kale ignored Vega for once, breaking into a sprint for the closest of the Geno Saurers, which was also the only one that looked different from the other three. Black and a dim purple that looked as though it was only barely distinguishable in even the best lighting, it was also a bit redder in the eyes, like it held an alertness that none of the others could quite come close to._**]**   
  
_ You`ve made me turn away   
  
_ **[**_"Kale?"_**]**   
  
_ Living just isn`t hard enough   
  
_** [**_The older brother dove forward, the Geno Saurer`s cockpit already extended to the ground and waiting. In an instant, he landed, sitting upright in the already retracting chair. Vega blinked in surprise before shouting.   
  
"Stop! You can`t do that!"****_]   
  
"**_NO MORE FUCKING GAMES!_**"   
  
_ Burn me alive, inside   
  
_** [**_The Geno Saurer clamped it`s footlocks in place, straightening up and aiming -_**]**   
  
- right for the cockpit of the Razorwind Fury -   
  
_ Living my life`s not hard enough   
  
_** [**_- as power gathered at the tip of the barrel, forming a glowing sphere for several seconds -_**]**   
  
_ They take everything from you   
  
_ - Vega looked on in abstract terror, fear for his own life budding to the surface in a single instant. Kale -   
  
** [**_- pulled the trigger -_**]**   
  
- and history stopped repeating itself. In the past, the beam had gone right over his head before scything along to form a way out of the hangar, and again it had hit him once before for a few seconds during their last battle. This time though, Specular snapped out of her haze-   
  
**_ NOT THIS TIME!   
  
_** - springing the Fury to life with a blue rage burning in those once orange hewed optics. It was a futile gesture for the survival of the Zoid itself, but it still did what she had intended, moving the cockpit out of the line of fire.   
  
_ Living just isn`t hard enough  
Burn me alive, inside  
  
_ The Razorwind Fury howled in pain as the Geno`s claws released it, the larger Zoid flying right off of the ground and flying through the air for over a hundred feet before tumbling down into the crater of the temple, sliding down to the epicenter right on it`s back. Charred black once more, brutalized beyond compare, the threateningly blue optics shimmered briefly and faded to orange, just before fading away entirely to black.   
  
_ Living my life`s not hard enough  
Take everything away  
  
_ Kale sighed to himself. His victory hadn`t been as satisfactory as he`d have thought, but it was still a victory and that was all that mattered.   
  
It`s time, Shadow spoke with a grimly pleased tone.   
  
The cockpit of the Geno Saurer slipped open, extending down to the ground as a pinkish-red glow started to take hold of the Zoid`s form.   
  
"For what?" Kale asked finally, leering up while stepping away, swiping the rucksack of his meager belongings in the process. Clothing, nothing else, and most of it had been... Acquired by Shadow through the past weeks.   
  
Evolution.   
  
The cockpit retracted, Kale watched with no amusement as the pinkish-red glow faded to what looked like a strange, glass-like purple, shaping itself into a tilted diamond as whisps of energy flittered up from the ground, circling. Revelation struck not too long after that.   
  
Whereas his ancestor, Raven, would have most likely burst into a fit of raving laughter, Kale Obscura only smiled murderously, sitting down on a nearby stone and watching the lightshow intently.   
  
  
And in the crater, a low hum echoed. It was followed by a mechanical gasp of air and a hard thump, ended by a grunt as a smallish form dropped out of the upside down cockpit of the ruined Razorwind Fury.   
  
Wiping the sweat from his brow, Vega Obscura crawled out from under his demolished Zoid, standing straight with a hardened frown. Zoid or no Zoid, Organoid or no Organoid, he wasn`t finished yet.   
  
The battle was far from over. Even Vega didn`t know just how long it would be...   
  


_ End Chapter Two_  


  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** All Hell Continues to Break Loose, yes? :D Next chapter probably won`t focus so heavily on Bit, Kale and Vega but do expect even **more** brutality to be involved! **_BAHAHA!!!_**  
  
**Rhade:** Thankyeh :P   
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Borealis is a headcase, isn`t he? With any luck I`ll be able to write him into the next chapter, along with Leon, Naomi, the Blitz Team and possibly Mark and Kyle. Hell, maybe even Harabec`ll get some screen time >_>;;  
  
**Illidan:** I`m leaving it to everyone`s imagination as to how massive the slaughter that Bit carried out **really** was, though the flashback sequences should have enlightened you at least a little. As for what side he`s on... Wouldn`t **you** like to know? >D  
  
Also: What did everyone think of this chapter`s heavy reliance on flashbacks during the Vega/Kale battle? Was it warranted? Hopefully I didn`t go overboard and did a good job on it, just a bit concerned. And also: The flashbacks weren`t really done in any particular order, they were just random examples of the kind of things that went on during the years before the original series.  
  
And on a final note: I **_HATE_** having to keep track of character ages... *Grumbles.* I gotta edit a lot of NA when it comes to character ages, and I also have to edit the one time I botched Altiel`s name... Grah. *Thud.*  
  
As always, enjoy, leave a review and see ya next time! Sh33p out.  
  



	3. Generalization of the Apocalypse

  
  
**Foreword:** If I had to suggest some music, it`d probably be Van Fleiheit`s attack theme or Phil Collins - In The Air Tonight. Don`t ask. Just read.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Generalization of the Apocalypse   
  
  
  


Roughly around two-hundred-and-forty-or-so years ago, a woman by the name of Maria Fleiheit had gotten in over her head with a Pastor by the name of Leon Vincent. The Paster had been the best friend of her own deceased father, the affair itself was more or less the product of any of the hundreds of oversized, highly alcoholic(and rightfully so) celebrations that had followed the fall of the second Death Saurer.   
  
Pregnant and unable to marry the baby`s father due to church law, Maria had left the Wind Colony in a mixture of shame and determination. Naturally a stubborn woman in her own right, she was also against abortions - which she could`ve easily gotten if she wanted. Instead though, Maria Fleiheit went on to school herself in medical sciences and basically raised her child - a son by the name of Deon Fleiheit - as a single mother, and a successful one at that.   
  
Eventually, Deon grew up, got married and had kids. And then his kids had kids and those kids had kids and so the process went until the birth of Leon Tauros, oldest of two children, brother to Leena, son of Steven and Rina, friend of a good few people in general.   
  
At present, Leon was seated in the cockpit of the Red Blade Liger, a Zoid with a lengthy and somewhat unbelievable history in and of itself. Serving as everything from the first attempt by Hiltz, Ambient and the Dark Kaiser to create a true countering force for Van Fleiheit`s Blue Blade Liger, to later being used briefly by Thomas Schubaltz and Zeke to being a lone wanderer in the middle of the desert to eventually being found - or more accurately, finding it`s current pilot.   
  
At present, the Red Blade was situated in mid-air, lunging sideways at a downward angle.   
  
"I _knew_ Romeo would be one of the first targets," Leon muttered with contempt as the Blade Liger stabbed and smashed a dark green Rev Raptor in the same instant, the blade gouging through the Zoid and forcing it to bend over before blaster fire blew out of the impaled Raptor`s posterior, tagging another Rev Raptor right in the throat and blowing the head off in an instant. A second later, Leon pulled the controls into a series of movements, pushing them back in after a final motion with his hands.   
  
The shield blazed to life a second later, throwing the disabled Zoid skyward and cannonballing it right into a low flying Foxbat, one of the only aerial Zoids present. Most of the other Zoids that had been gathering for a lightning-styled attack on the city, a raid that Leon had _coincidentally_ stumbled upon, were trashed and in ruin. It wasn`t as severe as the numbers that Bit Cloud had been dealing with, and Leon had been graced with both the element of surprise and a great deal more room to manuever.   
  
As such, most of the aerial Zoids were taken down in the opening seconds, and the others followed in a prolonged festival of gunshots and swift strikes, one of which was repeated a few moments after one of the last Foxbats went down.   
  
The Blade Liger hopped to the side and dropped it`s shield, the ground it`d been standing on exploded and another pair of shots rang out, blowing open the guts of one of the only three green-and-stripes-of-black Rev Raptors left standing. There`d been six at the start of Leon`s attack, there`d also been two Foxbats matching in color to them. Given the differences, it wasn`t hard to figure out that those formed the upper chain of command, especially not for a guy who spent roughly half of his free time from the age of four to eighteen studying military tactics like a zealot, and now devoted even more of his spare time to it than he had before.   
  
As a result, they`d gone down first. Lop off the head, the body dies. Simple plan, right?   
  
Of course in this case it was more like: Lop off the head, body runs around for a few minutes flailing and spewing blood all over your brand new shoes. _Then_ dies.   
  
Shots rang out again, Leon vaguely had the time to register an explosion only a few yards behind the Blade Liger, and then smoking, burning debris rained down from above and behind, the remains of a Foxbat from the looks of things. Overhead, a silver blur moved quickly through the low altitudes, barrel rolling and in one fluid motion slamming an orange, glowing blade through the cockpit of one of the last Rev Raptors, killing the pilot and leaving the Zoid to stand still for several seconds before falling over onto it`s belly, essentially brain dead.   
  
"You should learn to watch your back," a woman`s voice sounded over the comm. Leon snorted indignantly.   
  
"One out of three dozen possible ambushes isn`t a bad record," he replied, swinging his blades up onto the Liger`s back and automatically pulling the triggers. In a split second, the last Foxbat was riddled with plasma, falling from the sky in a brilliantly crimson fireball.   
  
"Touché," came the retort as the Storm Sworder whipped around and flew upside down, effortlessly slashing through the cockpit of another Rev Raptor, slicing it`s snout off in the process and leaving the pilot to sit there with an utterly mortified, blanked out look of abstract shock on his face. The Zoid fell over a second later.   
  
"Abbie`s sister, right?" Leon asked, turning and watching as the remaining three or four Rev Raptors took off in the direction they`d most likely come from. The Storm Sworder`s blades folded back out of sight and the Zoid arced high over the Red Blade Liger, slowing down to a minimum.   
  
"Pierce is the name, don`t wear it out."   
  
"I`m willing to bet you`re not doing this out of the goodness of your heart," Leon stated with cynicism in his voice.   
  
"I`m _not_ having my _new_ house blown up by a bunch of drug addled apocalyptic lunatics with a cannon fodder fetish," Pierce explained without a hitch. "Nice piloting, by the way," she added as an after thought.   
  
"Not too shabby yourself."   
  
"Think they`ll attack again?"   
  
"Probably."   
  
There was a rattle of a gattling gun, two of the Rev Raptors fell over, another simply froze in place as high powered slugs drilled into it`s leg and hip joints and the fourth simply exploded under the heaviest portion of the barrage. The Storm Sworder swooped down over the remaining two, knocking them into the air from the force of a sonic boom, which inadvertently sent both crashing to the ground head first, crushing the cockpits and killing the pilots. The third had the misfortune of being in the shrapnel range of the fourth.   
  
"... Guess not," Leon mumbled to himself with a dry tone. He was a protector in this case, not a ruthless killer. Then again, Pierce would`ve said the same thing, her methods just happened to be a bit less merciful, probably a small amount more effective, but still.   
  
  
A loud crash in the middle of an empty region in the vast desert. Technically all of the desert was empty, Zi wasn`t exactly a place known for being covered in forestry of any kind, this was no different. It was at least far enough away from the ruined convey that there wouldn`t be any interruptions to deal with, and that was all that really mattered.   
  
Two Organoids stood across from each other, the second having to fling himself back up to it`s feet in an obviously defensive posture. Alone and uncaring, the two spoke with their true Voices, echoing in a pair of choirs, one speaking of an utter lack of cohesion and the other speaking of a willingness to make use of it.   
  
**_ Now who the holy Roman butt-fucking-HELL do you think you ARE?! I was THIS CLOSE! I could`ve had a damn cigarette, but nooooooo!   
  
_** ... Cigarettes are bad for you. Not like you could smoke one anyway.   
  
** IT`S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS, DIMWIT!!!   
  
** Whatever.   
  
** Now WHY did you drag me out here?! HUH?! WHY?!   
  
** Because, I have an offer.   
  
A pause as the green Organoid shifted about slightly.   
  
**_ You ALREADY reigned my FUCKING ASS in, ya dolt.   
  
_** Then why are you free? Because **I** allowed it, Spectacle stated, answering his own question before Borealis could ramble any further. _I need some help for my own goals, goals which don`t necessarily rely on Vilhelm or his organization. Goals that rely more... On... The proper application of the talents and blood of a close friend of your`s...   
  
** You do realize with the proper application of FORCE, I can and WILL cram a three-hundred-and-fifty pound lineback head-first UP YOUR ASS, ALIVE AND SCREAMING!!!   
  
** ... I don`t **have** an ass.   
  
** ... Yeah, well... I 4M D3H 3V11 L33T0R 0RG4N01D, B14TCH!!!11!   
  
** ... Nevermind.   
  
_ Spectacle disdainfully shook his head and turned away, walking several steps before coming to a pause.   
  
_You might want to avoid trying to rescue your other 'friend.' It seems he`s sworn your personal destruction at any cost.   
  
_ With the warning given, Spectacle`s body took on a brief glow of an ethereal green before exploding into a streak of emerald over the horizon, carrying off into the night alone. Borealis halted his antics once the other was gone though, doubtfully staring at the ground for a long while.   
  
_** Well, what in the hell do I do now?**_ The red-blue-and-black Organoid asked itself, making no motions to leave or even glance around. Borealis was free now, but who could he possibly share that freedom with?   
  
Some answers only lead to other questions, all of them harder than the ones before.   
  
  
Farentown. On normal evenings, the city`s lights would be dimmed by now and the police patrols would be cut to less than half, and none of the local Zoids would be loose and standing in something vaguely similar to a military guard position. Half of the police Zoids were scorched, the other half was at least lightly damaged, while many of the Warrior-owned Zoids bore similar conditions. Rommel`s global ambush had taken much more of a bite out of the civilians` ability to fight than even he had thought possible, but a good many Zoids still remained functional, along with a few local Zoid shops. It didn`t mean much in the grand scheme of things but Farentown was at least vaguely safe for the time being.   
  
"Well shit," Kyle mumbled, half under his breath, at the sight of what remained of the police force situated around the city, enormous clouds of smoke drifting up from the less fortunate buildings that had been set ablaze as a result of the Rommel bombs. The fires had been put out for the most part, but Farentown was still obviously hurting a whole lot more than Romeo City was. Several dozen trashed Zoids, all green or dark green, lay splayed in ruin at the edge of the city`s eastern section, just barely visible in the light of the evening. Most were still burning, so combat had obviously been very recent, no doubt.   
  
"Looks like that Rommel guy wasn`t just some prankster," Abbie mused from the front passenger`s seat, staring at the downed heaps of Zoids. At least fifty had made the attack, all of them and a number of police Zoids were trashed beyond word now. "This really is starting to look like the end," she added dryly.   
  
"Well, gee, thanks for the reminder Miss Frying Pa-" A crack of bone and cartilage. Kyle fell over backwards into the back seat of the Gustav.   
  
"It`s not so bad once your hand goes numb," Mark pointed out thoughtfully, shaking out his newly bruised hand as Kyle`s eyes swirled around in opposite directions. "That wasn`t called for, Markie," Abbie snorted indignantly.   
  
"Ehhhhehhhhh," Kyle wheezed out from the back seat. "_Marki_-" Another swish of air as the front driver`s seat flipped back, promptly smushing Kyle like an insect. Mark leaned back up.   
  
"Friggin` pests," he grumbled, slowing down at what looked like a hastily put together roadblock on the highway into the city.   
  
"My ribs..." Kyle groaned, falling sideways with the majority of his upper body now laying behind the front driver`s seat.   
  
"Mark," Abbie began with her tongue in her cheek. "Apologize, now."   
  
"But you`re the only one who can call me-" "- _**MARKIE!!!**_" Kyle interrupted from his spot in the back seat. Mark twitched.   
  
"_Apologize_," Abbie ordered sternly, glaring up at her boyfriend from the front passenger`s seat.   
  
"Fine, fine..." Mark began as the Gustav pulled to a dead stop.   
  
"I`m-" A pause, then the seat slammed back down and pulled back up.   
  
"**_AGH!_**"   
  
"Terribly-" Again.   
  
"**_OW!_**"   
  
"_Sorry_-" Once more.   
  
"**_AHHH!_**"   
  
"For-" One more time.   
  
"**_GRAGH!_**"   
  
"_Inconveniencing you_." This time the pause lead to seven or eight of the abrupt smash-fests.   
  
"**_OW! AGH! OW! OW! GAAAAH! HALP!_**"   
  
With that, Mark sat back up and sighed with pleasant relief. Abbie twitched blithely and finally let out an annoyed sigh. If she could breathe fire on him for his behavior, she probably would have...   
  
The cockpit flipped open a second later and a slightly wounded looking policeman carrying an anti-Zoid rifle stepped up, leering uneasily at the Shadow Fox and the Ivory Blade Liger being towed by a black-and-blue Gustav that just _happened_ to have a pair of machine gun turrets on it.   
  
"Who are you and what`s your business here?" The officer asked, stepping up to look at the occupants of the Gustav. He found himself staring blankly at a good looking, well-to-do seeming young woman sitting next to a bandaged up guy with half-visible bags under his eyes and a slightly-bloodied, bruised mess of a bishounen lying vacantly in the back seat, occasionally mumbling out things like 'I feel happy...' and 'I`m not quite dead yet... Really...'   
  
"Just tourists," Mark answered with a jerky crack of his neck, his expression bordering on psychotic in the process.   
  
"Uh... Ma`am, are you _really_ with these two?"   
  
For all of a split second, Abbie honestly considered lying and saying she was an unlucky hitch hiker or a kidnap victim but... No, she really _did_ love Mark too much to do that. Even if he was close to being clinically insane for the time being. Or just acting like it. Whichever was closer to the truth.   
  
"Yes, that`s Kyle Mazemia in the back seat and Marcus Harlock in the front. I`m Abbie Summers, I work and live here, Mark`s uncle lives here and Kyle is just an unlucky friend."   
  
"I feel... Pretty... Oh so... Pretty..." Came from the backseat before a dull thump came when the half-unconcious senior member of the Suicide Team fell headfirst into the floor.   
  
"As you can see, I`m the only normal one."   
  
"... Yes, I think I noticed that by now," the officer nodded sagely in agreement. Obviously wasn`t a very big fan of Zoid battling given that he wasn`t pandering for an autograph. "I`d ask these two to join the security forces but... Um..."   
  
"We`re too _special-sexeh_?" Mark asked, suddenly leaning forward and grinding his cheek into the face of the the officer.   
  
"... Too crazy fits it better," Abbie sighed, grabbing her boyfriend by the shoulder and firmly yanking him back into the cockpit, causing his head to wobble around unstably like rag doll.   
  
"You`ll have to excuse my nephew," another voice sounded as the officer wiped bandage-goo off of his face with a sour expression. "He`s never exactly been the 'normal' type," Harabec stated as his Rev Raptor walked into view, automatically causing Mark to straighten up with a freaked out look on his face.   
  
"I knew that by now," the poor policeman muttered to himself. "Alright, you can go," he said, walking to the hacked up piece of metal that was serving as a block, both of the Godos stepping out of the way a second later. The officer then worked hard to shove the metal out of the way with a forklift, clearing the road completely.   
  
"Oh, and Abbie!" Harabec shouted, the cockpit of the Revered Raptor flipping open. It was obvious just how abrupt everything had been, the only pilotwear that the former champion was wearing were his gloves. He was still in his pajamas and socks for the most part, and his hair hadn`t dried yet so he had obviously been caught in or just out of the shower.   
  
"The hospitals`re _really_ understaffed right now, think you could give `em a hand?" He asked, practically ignoring Mark and the pulp that could still vaguely be identified as Kyle.   
  
"I`m just a student..."   
  
"But you _do_ have medical experience, they`ll take what they can get right now," Harabec pointed out somberly before shifting his gaze over to Mark and Kyle. "As for you two, get off your asses and into your Zoids, playtime`s over and we need everyone we can get."   
  
With that, the cockpit slipped shut again and the black-and-gold Rev Raptor wandered away not long after.   
  
Mark shook his head with a sigh.   
  
"Since when did _he_ become all military-like?" He groaned.   
  
"Since the end of the world," Abbie replied in kind. "I can drive to the hospital on my own, you two are needed," the green haired young woman added a second later, undoing her seatbelt while Mark did the same, albeit in a dejected fashion - Mark actually _liked_ being needed from time to time. "I thought you hated Zoids?" He asked.   
  
"I do," Abbie muttered out while standing up to switch seats. "But you _did_ teach me how to drive the thing," she sweetly pointed out in that tone that made Mark`s blood boil every so often. The same tone she used when talking about no cotton candy...   
  
"Now hurry up, they might need you soon," she pointed out sternly.   
  
"... Right. C`mon, Chinbitch," the younger member of the Suicide Team grumbled out in a harsh tone, reaching over the seat and somehow dragging the clearly disoriented Kyle out of the floor and out of the cockpit by the roots of his silvery hair, keelhauling him along the concrete of the road like a stereotypical caveman on the way to their Zoids.   
  
  
** Battle lines are being drawn.   
  
** Madison grimaced.   
  
** We cannot do this alone.   
  
**_ "Any suggestions?"_ She asked darkly, glancing off to the horizon as any one of the thousand or so battles that had spread across the world like a rampant wildfire picked up, with a helplessly outgunned number of Republican patrol Zoids, one of the few squads that hadn`t been knocked down in some way or another by the global ambush.   
  
** We will head to the indefinate point of collision between two or three of the Five. There, we will have to decide our next course of action.   
  
** Madison reclined back against the enormous feather crest of the Organoid, that oversized club settled beside her. Despite the fact that all of the feathers were actually some sort of organic steel capable of slicing through most modern armor like nothing, and despite the fact that the things were about as thick as an ordinary CD case, they made fairly good seats and recliners so long as the blades weren`t what you leaned against.   
  
"I don`t like this. If Two and Three manage to make battle, there`s a chance that Five may not survive. If Three is defeated though, it`ll only be temporary at best," Madison answered finally with a sage nod, pink eyes leering uneasily at the nearby battle. Of course, with the sight of an Ancient Zoidian, nearby could mean anywhere from genuine closeness to five or more miles, all viewed in similarly perfect detail. The battle itself was playing out all of a mile and a half away, and it was fierce.   
  
** ... Five must live. Like the others, he has a vital role to play in the coming events. What they are, what they may be, I am not sure.   
  
** "Then perhaps we should just ensure his survival through indirect means."   
  
** Sektoriuspalianedraehelviknorcikindeluwomdelar?   
  
** "I`d prefer it if you speak names in ordinary terms," Madison pointed out, standing atop Roc`s head and just watching the battle. The Organoid vacantly seemed to 'blink,' that is to say it`s optics briefly blackened and then lit once more.   
  
"Even I can`t speak your language," she added as an afterthought to halt any debate with the Ancient. The language that Zoids used to speak to each other, it could be called Zoidian if not for the confusion that would cause, was usually called Organoidian, because both breeds of mechanoids spoke it. The Ancient Zoidians themselves only new that it existed by chance, but the language itself was unbelievably complex. Every Zoid and every Organoid had at least two names: The name humans and/or Zoidians used for it - and usually the name that other Zoids and Organoids spoke to it with - and the Name it had been Born with.   
  
To give an idea of how complex names and words could be in Organoidian: Roc`s name, three letters in the plain, basic tongue, translated into well _over_ one-hundred-and-fifty-_thousand_ characters in length in Organoidian, and was completely unpronouncable by any sane human being or Zoidian. While most names didn`t translate as being so lengthy, it gives one a vague idea of how crazy such a language is, even though Zoids and Organoids could speak it perfectly.   
  
English had just replaced Organoidian because it was quicker to use. Convenience and ritual usually don`t mix.   
  
** I will remember that.   
  
** "So you`ve said the last four times," the cave woman-seeming figure replied with a rare bit of humor. Alone and a stranger trying to save a strange world from a true apocalypse that she, nor her beloved Organoid, wanted to see again, Madison Rose, gingerly turned to face ahead as Roc`s silver aura began to tinge into view as little more than a gentle outline, itself outlined by a thin streak of dark blue   
  
"Shall we?"   
  
** Indeed. Let us hope that we are not too late to influence the outcome of things.   
  
** A crack of what sounded like rolling thunder, and then the First Born and the Guardian were gone in a streak of eerie light.   
  
  
_ "Do you feel that?"   
  
_ Zeke failed to respond. The Organoid that had once viewed itself as Bit Cloud`s birthright was unconcious from exhaustion as the Liger Zero swaggered it`s way through the evening desert, one of five undeniable wildcards in the conflict that had spread across Zi like lightning. The drums of that conflict - the drums of _war_ - still beat loudly in the blonde youth`s ears as he leered at the source of the ominous power in the distance. Power that held an uncanny familiarity to it.   
  
Power that he had to destroy, if for no other reason than revenge.   
  
Blood still caked across his skin as he started to guide the Liger in a slow, predatory walk towards the source of that power, that crimson diamond in the rough. With every ounce of malice his heart could stir, Bit Cloud was intent on nothing short of brutally murdering the source of that power, that hated, recognized, _hostile_ power that so tauntingly sat on the very edge of his newly awakened senses.   
  
It was almost euphoric, you see. The sense of raw _power_ bubbling up in his veins at every step that his Zoid made. Power that was his birthright, power that made the vague remains of his own humanity seep out through the very cuts in his own tingling flesh, however sealed those cuts were.   
  
With a maniacal, sadistic chuckle, Bit - or at least, this _monster_ that had once _been_ Bit Cloud - leaned back in the seat, smiling murder at his unseen target, the foe he would see dead before the night`s end.   
  
  
"Good, you`re still awake."   
  
"I`m going to kill you," Bill Chapman announced bluntly to his captor. Where most typical dictators would immediately punish him for such a statement, Vilhelm Rommel just laughed mirthlessly. Most typical dictators would follow up such a laugh by having their typical lackeys beat Chapman senseless.   
  
Vilhelm Rommel was not a dictator. He was a ruthless hand guiding an equally ruthless tool of what amounted to mindless destruction at it`s most thoughtful - if such an oxymoronic statement could ring true. Amusedly stepping to the side as the soldier who`d opened the door - a bigger man than Rommel himself was, no doubt - lumbered into the darkly lit prison room, grabbing Chapman by the shoulder and yanking him up from the floor. The enslaved gladiator of a former Warrior only smiled lethally at his chief captor, even as he was being dragged along towards the hangar.   
  
"What do you want me to do?" He asked, almost delighting in forcing Rommel to torture him, if only because his own defiance inspired him to keep going, to test his limits and see just how much damage he could get away with causing to Vilhelm`s image. Along the way, they paused at a cell, waiting for an elevator to the deck that the hangar was situated on.   
  
"Destroy."   
  
"What though?"   
  
"Romeo City. You`ll be coming in at the rear of the next attack we make there."   
  
"**_LET ME OUT! I NEED THEM! I NEED MY FUCKING STIMS!!!_**"   
  
A pause. The sound of rusted chains clanking about violently as a figure unseen in a room darker even than the dreary cell that Bill was being kept in. The clanking stopped abruptly though, breaking into a quiet rustling of tortured, agonized sobs that shocked Chapman right out of his kick of defiance.   
  
"Don`t mind Henry, he`s still going through withdrawls," Vilhelm said with a smile, cold and villainous. Something outright satanic burned in his eyes, and in that fire, Chapman found his ice of resolve melting fast. Only a solemn vow of revenge kept him going, and even that seemed to be falling to the wayside.   
  
"Just remember that I don`t have to kill or electroshock you to punish you, Chapman. Those are only for in-field obedience, I can just as easily turn you into him," Rommel pointed out harshly, knowing in some undeniable way that he had just broken the back of Bill Chapman`s will to keep fighting his captor`s efforts.   
  
The elevator switched open, and the three men stepped inside soon after, though the third was obviously dragged in on his back.   
  
  
Slowly, with purpose in every step, Vega Obscura made his way up out of the crater. The weight that was his armored vest had been chucked aside haphazardly, left near the bottom of the steep slope of blackened glass, frail as that glass was to the force of his fingers. Determination beyond his years lined his expression, youth worn to nothing but a hardened exterior showed on every one of his slender features. If one looked closely enough, they would probably spot the stress induced gray hairs hidden on the back of his head by that strange bowl-cactus style do he and his brother shared.   
  
His brother.   
  
Vega paused with a sigh, he was only halfway up the side of the crater walls - roughly two hundred feet from the start of the climb up - and he was already tired. It was to be expected, but the same determination that had seen him through so much already willed him to carry on, roughly gouging his gloved hands into the glass again and again and again, pulling himself a bit higher on tired limbs every time, his boots gouging into the glass as well. If not for the thickness of the gloves and the boots themselves, his hands and feet would`ve probably been cut to ribbons.   
  
His brother.   
  
Vega sped up briefly, hauling himself every further up the side of the crater wall with no aid and no safety device. Alone, he no longer heard Specular`s voice, nor could he even vaguely register his Bond-partner`s presence through that strange, peripheral link that all Organoids had with those they were Bound to. It was all because of his brother, and Shadow. That _damned_ Shadow. He grit his teeth at the thought of the dark Organoid that had so joyfully succeeded in forcing him to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory. If not for that damned Organoid...   
  
If not for his thricely damned brother.   
  
If not for Kale.   
  
An hour passed by in stonewall silence. And then, at almost twenty feet from the edge of the crater, silence evaporated to a dull, rhythmic hum. Familiar. Vega knew it. Vega knew it and he knew it was tainted. Evil in one of it`s most awe inspiring incarnations.   
  
"Shadow," he growled out, keeping his emotions in check but speeding up nonetheless. He almost scrambled over the top of the crater wall, rolling onto his back with a few hard breaths before straightening himself up on the ground and rolling to his hands and knees, slow to his feet a second or two later. He was still exhausted, but that didn`t matter. Nothing mattered but his mission.   
  
A pinkish red glow lit the area at 4:30 in the morning, thrown off by a purple, glass-like diamond that tilted at an odd angle, whisps of energy circling up and around it steadily. The very glow was warm, but unwelcoming. Almost spiteful just to look at, and within it`s eerie, unwelcome warmth, in plain sight, sat a lone figure atop a solitary stone.   
  
Vega walked forward. A minute and a half passed by before that figure gingerly cracked his neck and stood up, glancing over his shoulder.   
  
Kale.   
  
He was wearing a different shirt, older and baggy, a little tribal looking and brown, like it was taken right off of the long dead Raven`s back, but it was still obviously Kale. Vega slowed to a stop, speaking nothing as his expression tightened considerably. He`d been hoping to get the element of surprise, but the older brother`s senses were just too well tuned, or Shadow was amplifying them somehow.   
  
"Stubborn little shit."   
  
No response. Something in the older Obscura seemed to chill, the warmth in the air fading to nothing but a malignant cold to match it. Vega wasn`t playing games anymore, not headgames, not games of power. The look in his eyes almost perfectly mirrored the coldness in Kale`s own, and with nothing to say, there wouldn`t be a stop.   
  
It was said, many years later, that on that same apocalyptic night, as Sarah Obscura was hastily dropped off at the Blitz Team base by one of the remaining Guardian Force Hammerheads on it`s way to a pre-planned rallying point, something in her own blood chilled considerably, and she leered uneasily into the desert with the concern only a mother could bear.   
  
_

End Chapter Three

_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Just when you thought I was running out of shit to throw at the fan, look what happens: Kale and Vega are about to continue their already insane battle to the death, Bill is going to attack the same town that Leon and Pierce just happen to be defending, Naomi`s still MIA, the Blitz Team as well(though they`ll **probably** appear next chapter), Bit`s still off his rocker, Kyle and Mark`ve been drafted, Harabec`s in his pajamas, Abbie`s actually gotten some _*Gasp*_ character development! ... And Borealis has been shocked out of his insanity... I think... Probably not, but still.  
  
**Night:** Got to you via e-mail already.  
  
**Illidan:** Glad to see people actually **liked** the flashbacks :P  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** You honestly don`t wanna know what Shadow`s warping into. Trust me. As for Rommel being like Prozen... They may have some similarities, but overall they`re not really that close to being like each other. Rommel seems a tad meaner, in my humble oppinion(*points up.* Prozen would`ve just shot the sorry bastard), but that`s up to the readers.  
  
And finally: A cookie to anyone who can actually remember who Henry really is given the obscure reference or two about him in NA. Two cookies to the person who actually remembers his full name :P  
  
That`s all for now everyone, enjoy, leave a review and see ya next time! Sh33p out. 


	4. Wildcards

  
  
**Foreword:** Too many friggin` songs to choose from for this one...  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Wildcards   
  
  
  


At the tender age of fifteen years old, Leyla Tsun was a girl who should have, by all means, been going to the prom with a highschool sweetheart. Pretty, intelligent, somewhat carefree and extremely thoughtful, Leyla Tsun was the kind of girl that most young men dreamed of taking home to their mothers and announcing being engaged to, after about three or four more years of aging, mind you. There were catches though, and chief among them was her current setting.   
  
Alone, in a padded room with a barred, mostly plexiglass window, reinforced by a pattern of wires. She had only been in the institution for several hours now, there were still marks on her wrists from where the handcuffs had been too tight. Innocence still spoke in eyes that were rapidly showing that the girl was remembering more than anyone should have. Memories dating back to before she had even been re-awoken from a dreamlike state in the middle of a desert not too many years ago.   
  
The institution was... A sad case, to say the least. With the apocalypse having come over just about everything on the planet, virtually all of the place`s caretakers had gone home to be with their families, leaving behind roughly 1,500 unsupervised, fairly dangerous headcases. They ranged from murderous schizophrenics to mostly harmless people with mental disorders like Leyla herself. It was hard to diagnose her case though, she didn`t exactly have the same physical make-up as a human, after all. Close though. Close enough that she could conceivably breed with a normal human being, but not quite human herself.   
  
At present, Leyla Tsun had her door locked. The window had been clamped shut, and she`d somehow gotten a hold of a fairly sharp piece of what was once a table leg, now a lethal tool for stabbing someone. The idea wasn`t that she was going to harm herself, it was instead an idea that focused more so on self defense.   
  
You see, Leyla had very sharp hearing. She could register an individual pin drop in the middle of a room filled with loud speech. Outside of her cell, screams, maniacal laughter and god knows what else could be heard, even through the thick, supposedly sound proof walls of her room. The light was off, the power to the entire facility had gone down and that was how so many people had gotten out in the first place. The only illumination came from vague moonlight, but with her sight, that was good enough.   
  
Her own door was only 'locked' because Leyla had the intelligence and speed to swipe several rolls of duct tape and the strength to drag the same table she had broken a leg from for her weapon of defense, and proceed to prop the table up behind her door in the inside of her room, then tape it in place several times over. While true that it couldn`t hope to hold back a determined inmate or two, it could and would take at least a few seconds to power through, seconds that Leyla could use to get ready for a fight.   
  
As it stood though, fighting was the last thing on the girl`s mind. Her strangely shifting eyes - they didn`t seem to have any permanent color anymore, varying from deep blue to a light green to a pale red every other second - had been set on the barred, wired window for an hour now. Silence dominated the room - aside from screams and laughter outside. Utterly alone, she had no one to rely on. Even the voices in her head, which she was able to only briefly hear for several minutes before the shock of the chaos that had engulfed the planet, had gone silent.   
  
_ "I miss Jamie already,"_ she thought with an emotion that seemed to bounce between sadness, bitterness and sorrowful affection all at once.   
  
  
In the midst of a desert, miles from one of the world`s few remaining army bases, a battle was raging.   
  
The battle in question was the final culmination of more than three hours of violent combat, brutally carrying from Zoids to fists. It was a battle between the Brothers Obscura, Kale versus Vega. If anyone was keeping tabs, it was round four, part two, and by any stretch of the imagination, it was also the single most personal battle that could be fought.   
  
Fighting in a Zoid distanced one from the reality of a fight to the death, made it seem a little less personal. When man mastered the art of fighting in a Zoid, combat with soldiers became something that was almost a thing of the past. Kale and Vega were, in this sense, reliving the past. They were fighting face to face in as personal a fashion as possible.   
  
A yell echoed, a mid-air kick unleashed by the smaller of the two combatants. Vega missed his mark though, and Kale moved like water, twisting his upper body out of the way with a fluid grace. The younger brother landed perfectly though, skidding on the ground before coming to a stop, shifting his stance right as his momentum died down, turning so that now he was looking back at Kale at a sideways angle, even as the older brother straightened himself up and cracked his knuckles.   
  
It was almost sadistic, how calm the two were. In a battle to the death, they were each fighting in such a detached way that in a sense, fighting Zoids was actually more personal than fighting with fists and feet.   
  
A low grunt and Vega went forward again, straightening up with another acrobatic jump that seemed to defy his own body`s ability to perform, carrying him through the air in a corkscrewing backflip. Kale was ready, making a quick step forward and twisting around on the ball of his ankle as if dancing, one elbow shooting up and virtually impaling Vega in the stomach as he finished his flip. The attack drew first blood, as Vega fell to his knees on the ground and sputtered up several drops onto the dirt.   
  
Kale drew his still-curled arm back up again and then knelt down, his knee crashing across Vega`s shoulder, but his elbow missed it`s mark as the smaller of the two straightened up on instinct. Kale`s elbow continued onto the ground, leaving him kneeling and off balance compared to the seemingly perfectly balanced posture of his kneeling brother.   
  
Vega`s arms were quick and agile, slipping around Kale`s forward leg below the knee and around his forearm below the elbow, rooting the stronger of the two fighters in an awkward position long enough for Vega`s lower body to come into play, one foot rooting to the ground and the other leg sweeping out in a half circle, tagging Kale`s ankle. The end result was that the older fighter lost his footing and Vega took keen advantage, knowing that his timing _had_ to be perfect.   
  
Kale`s face slammed into the dirt hard, Vega having carried through with the momentum and leverage to heave his considerably larger brother right over his head and drive him into the ground, rolling over on top of and in front of him a second later to try and do it again, but this time, he met a hard fist across his right shoulder, forcing him let go and preceeding the equally hard boot that crashed into the same spot a second later, spinning the smaller fighter out onto his stomach.   
  
Kale sprang up, Vega rolled beneath him in the middle of it and made it to his hands and feet in a crouch, springing up himself in an instant that passed as a hard fought eternity. Kale spun around, his instincts true and his forearm even truer, blocking the violent knee that would have probably caved in his skull between the eyes if he was even a hundredth of a second slower.   
  
For a moment, the two seemed almost deadlocked. Vega almost hung in mid-air against the whims of gravity, the force of his slim leg driving hard against the durability of Kale`s limberly built arm, just before the smaller fighter dropped down to his feet and lashed out with a punch. The older of the two dodged back in an utterly care free fashion, the punch missing his stomach swiftly. Vega tried again with two more, each of which was dodged in similar fashion with sidesteps, then he halted his punching attempts and lashed out with an angered sidekick, the kind that could ordinarily slice a man right in half if executed properly.   
  
Kale dodged this too, hopping back and using his side to his advantage. A knifing punch flew out, every finger held straight in karate chop-fashion. Vega was caught off guard in the middle of his own kick, and his cheek promptly split from a grazing cut, though it was only a precursor. The younger stumbled, his balance compromised to the right, and the older took full advantage, one hand drawing back as the other arm launched up like a hook, latching under Vega`s right armpit.   
  
In an instant, Vega was airborn, and Kale spun around, latching his arms together and slinging his younger brother right over his head and down into the ground with a sickening thud, only to receive a desperate kick in the chin in reply.   
  
Kale stumbled back, his head spinning, and Vega rolled back to his knees and then to his feet, his entire body in pain and the cut on his cheek stinging with a non-existent venom. He didn`t pause though, sore and exhausted, he attacked again, jumping forward, straightening himself out sideways in mid-air and dedicating his entire body to a single mid-air punch that tagged Kale solidly in the left cheekbone with every ounce of Vega`s speed and weight going into it, knocking the older Obscura for a loop and sending him to stagger awkwardly back before faltering onto his knees dizzily, losing his balance again and falling forward to both knees and one hand, the other held firmly to his now-busted forehead.   
  
The action paused, Vega took the opportunity to get to his feet from the ground and gather his breath again, unknowingly letting his shortlived advantage slip away to the middle ground, where Kale would likely snatch it back up when he inevitably rose again.   
  
"This is for Specular, you _bastard_," Vega spat between ragged breaths, not knowing whether or not he truly meant his supposed motive, but still having his words carry all the impact that was needed. Kale only chuckled dimly between his own worn sighs for air, standing back up not too long after on uneasy legs, his back turned to the enormous diamond of energy that the two had turned into the nightlight for their apparently final confrontation.   
  
The twin moons of Zi ran red with the blood that had been, and would be spilled again on a night that would forever be remembered as the night that dreams died.   
  
  
Twelve minutes ago, the HoverCargo pulled to a graceless, blunt stop in front of the Blitz Team base, and once it had, the occupants had noticed the middle aged woman standing in front of the huge structure in a business suit looking like a timebomb had just gone off in her head. Six minutes ago, a Whale King known as the Empress Heart had touched down next to the HoverCargo right on the asphalt in front of main hangar.   
  
Now, the entire group was gathered in what amounted to the 'meeting room' of the base, which was actually the room that the Blitz Team generally used to run tactical and strategic combat simulations. The technology was actually second rate but, with the constant tinkering of both Steven Tauros _and_ Jamie Hameros, it all operated on at least equal standing with even the best modern military computers that served the same function.   
  
The group in question consisted of six people: Steve and Leena Tauros, Jamie Hameros and Brad Hunter - who were all that really remained of the current roster of the Blitz Team - as well as Sarah Obscura and Leyon Martin. The last two had been unexpected, but with the impending destruction of the entire planet, none of the others really cared that much to try and stop them from joining the 'party.'   
  
"All Hell`s broken loose," Steven concluded at the dozens of spartan news reports that were being sent out to anyone who could and would look at them.   
  
"I think we figured that out already," Leena added somberly, leaning against the arm of her chair. She`d changed clothing by now, a turtleneck sweater and a pair of black pants. The glasses she wore set at a slightly off angle on her nose, but the lighting in the room reflected dimly against them, only vaguely illuminating each of the electrical scars across her face. All of the scars on her body were hidden by the clothing she wore.   
  
"We need to get out of here and head somewhere that`s actually safe," Jamie mumbled out blithely. It seemed nobody could state anything other than the obvious at this point. Sarah was quiet, Brad was sardonic and Leyon was waiting for the chance to say something, leaving everyone to expectantly leer over at Leena and Steve.   
  
"I`m with Jamie on this one. The base isn`t going to be excluded from any attack that might take place, especially with it`s proximity to both Farentown and Platston. My bet`s that we head to Farentown but..."   
  
"But the place is the second biggest target for anyone gunning to inflict the maximum casualities in the shortest amount of time," Jamie cut in with a dry tone. He wasn`t as scientifically minded as Steven or Leyon, nor was he as ruthless and politically thoughtful as Sarah, but when it came to picking apart a strategy or a tactic, no one came close to him.   
  
"I don`t really see _what_ Rommel and his people are all going for," Sarah added, tossing her two cents into things. "He seems out to do nothing but cause death, and most people have a core desire to sustain their lives and the lives of others, if only out of greed."   
  
"What fun is it when everyone`s dead, huh?" Brad interjected finally.   
  
"Exactly. He doesn`t strike me as a dictator - _or_ a criminal mastermind out to make a name for himself."   
  
"He`s after Asmodeus," Leyon finally said.   
  
"Asmodeus?" Leena asked, just a second ahead of the others.   
  
"I`ve only theorized it`s existence until now. Zoidian mythology speaks of a number of terrible evils being the cause for the creation of the Death Saurer and the two original Death Stingers. I guesstimated - thanks to Steven and my college theory on the balance of the world - that there had to be one Zoid that, above all others, had death and destruction built into it`s very namesake."   
  
A pause.   
  
"Eventually, I found a single name. It wasn`t attached to a picture, only a line of names that grew increasingly frantic until the last line of text that read: Asmodeus. Nothing else."   
  
"And how can Rommel be after something that only _you_ knew about?" Steven asked dryly.   
  
"I`m a mad scientist, dolt. We`re a dime a dozen, in case you haven`t noticed by now."   
  
"Not that we can do anything about it," Brad cut in with calm resignation. "My Zoids`re all destroyed or in the hands of an utter lunatic, the Gunsniper`s had it`s throat ripped out and Bit`s been M.I.A. for days now. No offense to Jamie and the Wild Eagle, but the Raynos, a Whale King and the HoverCargo won`t do jack shit if they come after us in numbers," the former mercenary concluded.   
  
"I`ve been meaning to talk to you about that," Leyon added. "But it can wait. Need the other half of the key first..."   
  
"Anything you _do_ know about this 'Asmodeus' thing?" Sarah asked, ending Brad`s chance of questioning Leyon on what he meant. The scientist coughed grimly.   
  
"Only that it`s a futile gambit at best. No one knows where the thing is, _and_ it requires an Ancient Zoidian to be activated, most likely a few other things as well, but I wasn`t able to get anything else from the ruins I got the information off of."   
  
"Well, I don`t know any Ancient Zoidians so..."   
  
"There`s Bit`s older-than-dirt grandmother," Leena pointed out, having actually remembered the inkling of information they had on the woman. "She could be an Ancient Zoidian if she`s _that_ old."   
  
"She`s dead. Suicide earlier tonight, along with an unknown partner," Leyon informed. At everyone`s questioning glance, he shrugged. "I keep an ear on every 'unused' frequency around. I _am_ a mad scientist after all."   
  
"So we know that there`s not really a chance they`ll get their hands on the Asmodeus-thing... This is all just an insane goosechase," Brad muttered. "It really fucking figures, doesn`t it?"   
  
"No," Jamie replied as if he`d just stared at his own grave.   
  
"What do you mean?"   
  
"_Leyla_."   
  
By the time anyone could finish a sentence or thought other than a collective '_oh shit_,' Jamie had literally ripped his way out of the room like a bat out of Hell, flinging the chair he`d been sitting in out of the way and almost falling over in his frantic run for the door.   
  
  
Two figures charged one another, illuminated from on side by a purple-tinged diamond lined with a red-pink aura, and from above by the two moons Zi, each of which glowed an eerie, somewhat sickening red in the late night, or the early morning depending on one`s view of things.   
  
A loud yell issued from each fighter, both went flying in an instant, the shorter going higher while the larger only making a hop the last way. They met at the midground, the smaller combatant practically stopping in thin air, halted on the forearms of his older brother, which braced together against his feet. Almost supernaturally, Vega tilted forward to crouch atop Kale`s elbows, his momentum only briefly allowing his weight to avoid coming into play as his hands locked firmly to his brother`s shoulders, allowing the younger of the two to come into a handstand for a few seconds.   
  
Those seconds ended with Kale losing his balance and receiving a pair of knees right into his collarbone, which only precursed the roll that Vega pulled off a few seconds later, using his weight and the fact that Kale was already off balanced to drag the larger of the two brothers down and sling him over again, slamming Kale harshly into the ground with his own weight.   
  
The younger brother was on his feet again in an instant, and was also making good to attack with a short sprint towards Kale`s downed form, lashing out with a punch. Kale caught his arm though, sitting up quickly into a kneel and judo-tossing Vega over his shoulder. The smaller of the two found himself wracked across Kale`s knee in an instant, letting out a scream of pain as a result, only to take a chop into the throat an instant later.   
  
Vega slumped off of Kale`s knee, lying upside down on his head and shoulders for a second while the older brother got up to his feet, then flopping onto his back.   
  
"Don`t you get it by now?" Kale asked, nonchalantly stomping into Vega`s gut. The reaction was a mix between a grunt and a yell of further pain. Kale smirked ruthlessly, grinding his boot right into Vega`s stomach before removing it and beginning to walk around the other`s downed form.   
  
"You," a pause, which lead to a sadistic kick into the ribs. Vega yelled again and rolled over to try and shield the injury. Kale stepped around him some more.   
  
"_Can`t_," another kick, this time into the shoulder and neck. Vega yelled once more and rolled over again, inching closer and closer to the gigantic cocoon that had enclosed around the Geno Saurer. He stepped around the downed eleven year old a bit more.   
  
"Beat me!" This time the words were only a precursor to several stomps into the stomach, each one harder than the first. Kale stopped though, and Vega curled into a ball, coughing and gagging for several seconds before being dragged up to his feet by his hair, blood now trailing down in droves from around his mouth. For a moment, Vega stood on his own, doubled over and still coughing up blood from the damage to his insides that the stomping had caused. Kale then nonchalantly yanked him upright by his hair, one fist pulling back and nailing Vega across the back of the head.   
  
Vega stumbled forward in a haze of pain, only to find another punch waiting for him, slipping between his admittedly small shoulderblades and jabbing into his spine.   
  
"**_STOP IT!_**" He finally screamed out in agony, only to find another punch waiting, a hook across the back of his head. Before he could finish falling over though, Kale grabbed him by his hair again and jerked him back to his feet, half shoving and half pulling him into a short walk to the very edge of the ground around the enormous diamond, which still glowed with a malignant, cold air about it.   
  
"I _said_: You _can`t_ beat **_me_**!" Kale repeated, yelling the words right into Vega`s ears before using one hand on the boy`s left bicep and the other on his hair to yank him straight off the ground and then sweep a straight, long legged kick across his chest. If Vega had been wearing his armored vest, it would have cratered around Kale`s attack in an instant.   
  
But the kick had another side effect. Vega flew back from it, continuing for all of a quarter of a second before slapping right into the wall of the diamond, and the results...   
  
"**_AHHHH!!!_**"   
  
Weren`t a pleasant, nor enjoyable sight.   
  
Vega went flying again, bouncing off of the huge, glass-like cocoon of energy, his entire body gone numb from the shock it caused. Sparks of electricity flew off of his small body, and after several seconds of moving through the air like a stone from a catapult, Vega smashed into the ground face first. The drop would have killed an ordinary human instantly, the roll that followed would have probably disfigured the corpse.   
  
For Vega, it meant that he was now thrice bloodier and more bruised than before, laying on his back in unbearable agony with all limbs stretched out. He couldn`t even find the resolve to move, every fiber of his being was in pain from being electricuted and thrown at least fifty feet through the air. Kale grimly smiled, wiping the blood off of his face with a nonchalant way that would disturb any sane person, almost lazily biding his time in a swaggering walk.   
  
  
In the crater, something was stirring. A pounding against the chest of the scorched Razorwind Fury -   
  
  
"And now, _dear_ little Vega, it`s time to be finished."   
  
Kale stopped, now standing right over his brother`s downed form, smiling murderously while drawing one hand up and back, fingers slowly uncurling into a straight, knife-like posture.   
  
Vega only laughed.   
  
  
- a pounding that was frantic, causing an eerie glow to come across the Zoid`s chest, a glow -   
  
  
"You can beat on me all you want Kale," the younger brother said in a moment of surprising clarity, pausing the older just by his smug tone. "But you`ll never be able to kill me..."   
  
"And how do you figure that?" Kale asked with a near laugh.   
  
  
- from _within_.   
  
  
"Because..."   
  
A pause as something sounding like shrieking metal echoed from the crater.   
  
"I have friends."   
  
At that exact moment, that same _instant_ in time where Vega finished speaking, Kale cut a sideways glance at the crater, just in time to see a fierce blue light, desperate in it`s intensity, streak up at a sharp angle, then lash out right for him like a bullet. By the time he finished screaming his surprise, the blaze of energy had completely closed the gap, shattering on impact to reveal an angry blue Organoid materializing right on impact with Kale`s chest, snout first.   
  
The force of the blow completely knocked Kale`s lights out, and it also sent him flying through the air at an unbelievable speed, landing with a hard skid across the ground until he lay right in front of the enormous purple cocoon.   
  
"And that`s all I need..."   
  
Vega only smiled whimsically from the dirt before passing out into unconsciousness, and Specular only managed what sounded like a guttural, protective growl before falling over, optics fading to black slowly.   
  
  
All of twelve seconds ago, Jamie Hameros launched from the HoverCargo at full speed, charging off into the desert skyline at close to mach three and a half. The result was a frantic group of people - bar one or two - who now knew that even _more_ Hell would probably be breaking loose fairly soon, especially since Jamie had gone off alone - which was _never_ a good thing anymore.   
  
"I don`t suppose anything any of us have can catch up to him, do you?" Steven asked in a resigned sigh, staring at the vapor trail of the disappearing Raynos.   
  
"My Whale King can`t do it, I know that much..."   
  
"Do you have any air Zoids aboard?" Brad asked, glancing at Leyon with that dangerous bit of mercenary fire returning to his eyes.   
  
"A Pteras and thats it. You`d probably be better off ta-" "I`ll take the Pteras."   
  
"Do you even know how to fly an aerial Zoid?" Leena asked as Brad took off in a sprint towards the Whale King`s open mouth. The reply was less than satisfactory...   
  
"There`s a first time for everything!"   
  
Steven and Sarah were both annoyedly staring at the disappearing mercenary, Leena let out a sigh and Leyon twiddled his thumbs annoyedly.   
  
"And I didn`t even get the chance to tell the lousy bum about the Diamond Fox," he grumbled, knowing that he wouldn`t be able to catch up in time. A few seconds later, a Pteras that strongly resembled the one that Jamie had once piloted launched awkwardly from the mouth of the Empress Heart, arcing skyward and, after several clumsy seconds of wobbling around, blasting off at full speed after the Raynos.   
  
"Ever get that feeling of being utterly useless?" Leena finally asked, hanging her head darkly.   
  
"Yes," came the answer from all three of the others who had been left behind.   
  
  
** It is time.   
  
** The words were simple as Roc materialized from his teleportation, Madison still perched firmly atop the ancient Organoid`s head, all one hundred pounds of that weird, metal club laying across one shoulder, held in place by a single hand. Black hair, spikey and long enough to reach the middle of the six foot tall Guardian`s back shifted slightly in the wind. Pink eyes bearing what could only vaguely be seen as slightly darker irises fixed to a single shade of movement in the seemingly endless vastness of the desert.   
  
It was a white movement, calm and subtle, slow and yet relentless, the stalk of a predatory lion or a tiger towards a pinkish-purple glow no less than a mile from it. At the current rate though, the predator would reach the prey none too soon.   
  
"Their fight will start dawn," Madison presumed after several seconds of thought. While not exactly educated on the society of the people and the planet she was now working - if only behind the scenes, for the time being - to protect, she was still highly intelligent, particularly about matters of combat. Roc rumbled in agreement before speaking again.   
  
** Specular has broken from her bonds in the Fury. She surprises me, this time.   
  
** "Five`s life _was_ in great danger. I`m more surprised she didn`t die in the process," came the slightly apathetic reply.   
  
** Do not underestimate the importance of this, Madison. The battle to come may very well alter the course of how this plays out. If Three is not brought back by the shock of Four, then we will be forced to consider almost all of the wild cards in this game lost.   
  
** "I don`t really see the point of letting them just battle as they will," Madison retorted. "If Vega is as important as you believe, we should at least try to get him out of the way."   
  
** This is a gamble. A desperate gamble, and things are going to be put at risk no matter what we do. The gamble we make now is just one of many that we are going to have to make in the future.   
  
** "Hnnn..."   
  
** It will be a hard road to travel, Madison. We will not know rest, we will not know comfort and we will not know peace until this ordeal has been seen through to whatever finish it may have.   
  
** A pause. Madison sighed.   
  
** It will be a hard road to travel, but we shall take it as ever the Guardians have.   
  
** "If we have to travel fate`s roads, why are we standing by, doing nothing?"   
  
This time, Roc failed to answer.   
  
  
As the moons faded into twilight, and the most distant light from the sun began to shine a deep orange into the skies of the desert, movement could be seen in front of the diamond-like shield of evolution around what had once been the Geno Saurer. Ever so slowly, that movement picked up pace, and soon after, Kale Obscura raggedly sat up, breathing hard and favoring the place where his shirt had ripped over his chest, leaving the ragged looking, tight material of his jumpsuit visible beneath, though beneath that, the skin had bruised a near solid black.   
  
The wounds would heal sooner than even Kale knew though, Shadow would see to that.   
  
Assuming, of course, that Kale survived what was about to take place.   
  
Standing raggedly, the eldest of the Brothers Obscura started a slow walk towards his two downed enemies. Specular had yet to move, Vega was still unconscious and nothing stood in his way. After almost a minute of staggering blithely about, trying to get his bearings and his wits in order, Kale came to stand directly betwee the Organoid and the boy, fists clenching and unclenching as he regarded each with an equal degree of pure spite and contempt, so enraged that it threatened to overflow and become more than just an emotion.   
  
Of course there was an unforeseen roadblock that appeared in his path to killing both of them. It wasn`t that he couldn`t tear Specular apart - he most assuredly _could_ do such a thing with enough effort, and it wasn`t that he couldn`t think of sixteen different ways to kill Vega with his hands alone. No, these were only minor technicalities that he was already able to overcome.   
  
The roadblock in question appeared before him with ever slowing steps, and as he finally leered up with nothing but maliciousness in his eyes, Kale found himself staring into a broken mirror.   
  
In front of him stood a bloodied young man with wild blonde hair and eyes that held an equal madness in them, and what was potentially an even more dangerous lust for blood, garbed in a crimson caked leather jacket, a teal shirt underneath, brown leather gloves and blue - though stained a reddish brown from blood - jeans, with a weird looking object concealed in a rough leather hilt hooked onto the back of his belt. In the crater, the roar of the Liger Zero could be heard, though the Zoid was holding back for whatever reason   
  
Bit Cloud stood angrily across from Kale Obscura, and destruction ruled the air as equals in armageddon prepared to face off.   
  


_ End Chapter Four  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** Another cliffhanger! Ain`t I a stinker? :D  
  
**Illidan:** I suppose we`ll have to find out next chapter, now won`t we? *Cackle.* Hopefully this`ll help cure Endless` ROC cravings :P  
  
That`s all for now folks. Enjoy, leave a review, see ya next time and Sh33p out.  
  



	5. Demons of the Twilight

  
  
**Foreword:** Disturbed - Awaken, Linkin Park - Numb or Metallica - Sad But True fit the majority of this chapter.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Demons of the Twilight   
  
  
  


"Why don`t you pick on someone your own size?" A voice echoed in the area of the desert as two young men stood across from each other. It was the voice of a killing machine that had once been a human being, and it was met with something that almost perfectly mirrored it in the underlying threat that it carried.   
  
"Don`t mind if I do," Kale Obscura said coldly, cracking his neck to either side and then spitting a combination of a loogie and a wad of blood into the dirt, walking forward from between the downed forms of Specular and Vega. With murder in both of their eyes, the two charged forward, not giving off any smart talk, not blabbing about philosophy, just trying to beat each other into unconsciousness or death, whichever had the distinction of happening first.   
  
Bit attacked first, but Kale`s speed closed the gap and their strikes made impact at the same instant. The side of a shin slammed high across the side of the blonde`s head, while a straight punch rained hard into the cheekbone of the raven-haired combatant, each of the two faltering back in perfect unison as a result. Kale was off balanced from the kick but Bit had been thrown into a waltz on dreamstreet by the kick, only barely avoiding his vision blurring.   
  
Again they attacked each other, and Bit threw his arms up, one reinforcing the other. Kale`s leg crashed into the defense, it would have broken bones with ease if it were any normal opponent, but instead of that, his kick rebounded and a haymaker of a punch followed.   
  
An amatuer boxer gone mad clashed with a rogue killer who had no sense of mercy, but it was a battle fought on even ground. The blonde`s punch was deflected by an upward elbow, the elbow carried into a downward karate chop, but the chop was parried by a forearm and a fist hit home by the time Kale`s formerly-kicking leg touched down, barely allowing him to keep his balance.   
  
Instead of standing straight though, both arms whipped back up, Kale turned around and the punch to his forehead became a grazing blow at best, Bit`s arms were grabbed and the older combatant slammed into the ground a second later from a judo-styled body throw. Bit hit the ground with a loud thud, but he grabbed Kale`s forearm in the process while turning himself over and springing up to one knee, giving a hard yank and twisting the other right into the air and onto his back, only to get a swift kick in the face in reply.   
  
Bit faltered back and rolled away to his hands and knees, then straightened up to his feet, and Kale simply sprang up to his feet, whipping around into a dropkick that carried him all the way over to the blonde fighter, only to realize too late that he had jumped the gun.   
  
This time, the haymaker hit home.   
  
Kale went flying back in mid-air, blood spraying out of both his mouth and newly-busted chin from the blow. Bit had only barely sidestepped the kick, but that didn`t matter with how hard his fist had struck the other of the two, tilting things almost decisively in Cloud`s favor for the time being.   
  
"You`re not so tough when you don`t have your Zoid with you," he observed mockingly, and Kale finally hit the ground, rolling backwards and to his feet with a good bit of effort, almost staggering back a bit more from the dizziness he was suffering. "Where`s your ego now, asshole? Can`t mock someone face-to-face?" Bit asked angrily, his mood shifting insanely from humor to anger and back again as he smiled after speaking the words.   
  
"I`ll mock you some more when you stop beating the shit out of me," Kale finally spat, shaking his head and straightening up with a feral growl. "Or when I`m finished breaking every bone in your body," he added before speaking again. "Whichever happens first."   
  
"Guess you won`t be mocking me for a _while then_," Bit replied, darting forward in a swift sprint to close the distance, but where Vega would have jumped, Kale found he was unable to anticipate that Bit merely hopped, just as the raven-haired killer had jumped into the air to try and kick him on instinct. The blonde ducked under the kick though, hanging Kale`s leg up on his shoulder and tagging him squarely in the cheek with an uppercut, hard enough that it jarred the other right back up into the air, but also hard enough that Kale`s reflexes could come into play again.   
  
Those reflexes lead to a backflip right off of Bit`s shoulder, which in turn lead to a solid kick into the blonde`s face, flinging him back into the air and causing an awkward landing on his head and shoulders, then a roll onto his stomach with his face planted into the dirt.   
  
"Short while, wasn`t it?" Kale asked smugly while landing in a crouch, perfectly balanced despite the injury that had been essentially dumped on him over the course of one night.   
  
"Almost as short as the rest of your life," Bit replied as if unphased, picking himself back up and standing tall. Both of the two young men were in what could best be described as that middle ground between collapsing in utter agony and overdosing on adrenaline, yet each was somehow perfectly calm. Blood trailed from the fresh wounds they`d inflicted on each other, bruising had formed all over the both of them and they were each staring ahead. Not at each other though, each was turned sideways to each other, one staring at the crater, the other at the diamond.   
  
Finally though, the eerie, tensed silence was broken, and it wasn`t by the dull, rhythmic hums of Shadow`s evolutionary shell.   
  
"I`ve been waiting for this for years," Bit finally muttered aloud, though partially under his breath. That said, he tilted his head down and glared sideways at Kale. "And I never even knew it until tonight. All I wanted, for two years was-"   
  
"- that one fight that brings out your own inner demons and forces you to confront them. Nothing left to hide-" Kale interrupted, cocking his head back and glaring at Bit in the same manner only to be interrupted again in turn.   
  
"- nothing left to lose," Bit continued. With a brief pause, both spoke again, saying the same words in the same way, the same murderous emotion flooding through each.   
  
"Everything to gain."   
  
As one, each reached behind themselves, Kale moving his left hand - the one turned away from Bit - up the back of his overshirt and grabbing a hold of something, Bit following in kind with his own left hand, which was hidden from Kale`s sight.   
  
Two clicks echoed through the air, and as one again, each drew a weapon. For Kale, it was a dagger. A stabbing tool, straight and tapering away to a sharpened tip. For Bit, it was the handleblade his ancestral grandmother had given him, shaped like a warped Z, held upside down. Again, with perfect unison, the two turned towards each other, stopping all movement after bringing their weapons forward, each man waiting...   
  
A staredown. Cold, ruthless, hardened to the core.   
  
Each fighter stared into one another `s eyes. No blinking, no movement, each looked straight into the soul of the other. Whoever blinked first would probably die as the two killing machines that had once called themselves mere Zoid Warriors engaged in a battle like none other.   
  
Where once stood men, now stood demons. Demons bathed in twilight, the stars, the setting moon and the ever-distant sun proving only shallow illumination compared to the disturbing crimson glow overtaking each, a glow provided by the nearby energy cocoon that was still only hours old.   
  
And then, each began to smile. Slowly, bearing their teeth as if each was an animal. Disturbing, a mirror image could be seen for all of a split second, and during that time, _everything_ stopped. It was as if the entire planet held it`s breath -   
  
_ "Oh my god..."   
  
_ - and then, Bit Cloud blinked.   
  
"_**DIE!**_"   
  
A flash of movement, a harsh clash of metal against metal, several fractions of a second passed and sparks flew in a hail through the air, the entire world went black and then the sun started to rise, revealing what looked like a shellshocked Bit Cloud standing back to back with Kale Obscura, each of the two in the middle of leaping sideways through the air, their weapons still hot from the clash.   
  
Another second went by, each touched down in their own strange way, Kale on his feet in a crouch, Bit in a kneel with one hand going forward to avoid falling over.   
  
"Amusing," Kale finally announced, standing up as Bit did the same, and even though they still mirrored each other almost exactly, their expressions no longer matched. Across the face of one, there rested the expression of a coldhearted, ruthless murderer like few that had been seen in the history of the world. Across the face of the other, only a mixing flood of emotions could be witnessed, ranging from horror to disbelief.   
  
Something had snapped the previous evening but on the very brink of falling into the void, _something_ had pulled Bit Cloud back. The abyss was denied another victim, and Kale found himself staring into something that, for the first time in months, sent a chill up _his_ spine, while Bit found himself staring back at something he could only see as pure evil.   
  
They were staring at each other.   
  
What they saw were themselves.   
  
"Or... Not so..."   
  
"What... Was..."   
  
Neither really finished, each only mirrored each other again.   
  
To an extent.   
  
Each charged forward once more, steels clashed, Bit knocked away the dagger with the handleblade but Kale had been counting on it, twisting broadside to the other combatant and then jumping, slapping the armor on his shoulder - hidden as it was by his overshirt - right into Bit`s head. Cloud stumbled sideways, Kale landed and lashed out furiously like a wild, caged animal attacking a sacrificial lamb, his leg crashing into the upper half of the blonde`s back with an audible, blood chilling crack, slinging Bit right off of his feet and to the ground.   
  
Again, Kale attacked with the dagger, stabbing outward. Bit rolled up to his knees and narrowly used the handleblade again, slapping the blade away before it could come in contact with his face, only to to realize all too late that it had been an utter ruse.   
  
A fist cracked like a baseball bat across the side of a skull, and Bit went down again, crumpling like a heap while Kale straightened up, twirling his weapon in hand before catching it in the midst of a quick motion, now holding it upside down in a stabbing position. It hurt to even think, he was distracted, he`d lost a lot of blood over the course of the night and it felt like at least a few bones had been cracked or broken, but in the back of his mind, something urged him on.   
  
As Kale attacked again, Bit Cloud rolled out of the way in a haze of pain, lashing out with the handleblade and swiping a clean cut across Kale`s cheek, just as the dagger was drawn back out of the dirt and a slash echoed with a whistle in the air.   
  
In unison, each reeled back from the other, one hand cradling the fresh wounds they`d both suffered. Slowly they rose once more, each bleeding anew. The cuts were a perfect mirror image, one across Kale`s left temple, the other across Bit`s right. Each of the two slowly got back to their feet, wheezing, panting, trying just to stand.   
  
Kale was exhausted, Bit was exhausted. Kale was hurting, Bit was hurting. Kale was bleeding, Bit was bleeding. Each had been in some of the toughest battles that had ever been fought, to give up and allow death or retreat wouldn`t have been shameful for either of them, but neither would have done such a thing. Something kept them on that field of battle, something that could never quite be explained. It was something far deeper than pride, contempt or even revenge.   
  
_ Fate_ had brought them against each other. It was up to them to sort this out.   
  
"I..." Kale began, failing to continue for a second.   
  
"_Hate_," Bit tried to pick up the words, but faltered as well. As one, one last time, they finished the sentence in eerie, terrifying finality:   
  
"_You_."   
  
Finally, both straightened up, Bit gave a twirl to the handleblade and Kale mirrored it with his dagger. For a second, neither did anything else, and then they attacked.   
  
Kale threw his dagger, Bit screamed, his grip on the handleblade failing instantly as hard steel stabbed mercilessly into softened flesh and tough bone, almost knocking his shoulder out of the socket, slowing him down but only for a second. Like a wild, enraged predator - a lion made human - the blonde continued his insane charge forward, jumping up with inhuman grace over Kale`s leg and landing perfectly in an uncharacteristic fashion.   
  
As one, they whipped around to face each other, but also as one, they lashed out. Spirits clashed this time, not steel, not even flesh.   
  
This time again, Bit flew back, crashing with a skid along the ground, moving right between Vega and Specular`s downed forms until he had stopped, right along the glassed edge of the crater. Kale had staggered back several steps, one of his arms hung limply at his side, the other outstretched in the posture of a finished haymaker. For a second, he stood there, and then collapsed to his knees, his good arm sagging down to the ground. The flexible armored pad along his shoulder was completely cratered in the shape of Bit`s fist, the fabric over it annihilated and the edge of the hole looked as though it had been recently set on fire.   
  
Sweat poured down with the blood on his face, Kale`s face clenched exhaustedly.   
  
"Why... Won`t you... Just... _Die_?"   
  
Bit only laughed mirthlessly, propping himself up on his good arm and finding that his attack had missed Kale`s head only to strike him right in the left shoulder. Coincidentally, it mirrored the wound on Bit`s right, bar the fact that Bit`s was a stab wound and Kale`s was a force trauma. The results were practically the same though, aside from how Bit was now bleeding from the shoulder as well. His arm had gone into a completely numb shock of unnatural cold, it hurt like Hell just to try and flex his fingers, let alone will his elbow to bend or his arm to move.   
  
Kale looked in no better shape as far as that went, slow to his feet but still in better conditions that his half-dead opponent, at least as far as the last match-up had been.   
  
"Quitting just isn`t something I know how to do," Bit finally said, grinning like an absolute psychopath.   
  
"I`m not telling you to quit, I`m telling you to die," Kale retorted sharply, glaring up from the ground with that same chilling glare, the glare of a vengeful spirit, no longer alive but unwilling to accept it until some key task had been carried out.   
  
"Then come and _make me_, you rotten bastard," Bit growled out, only then realizing that the dagger was still -   
  
** [**_... Vega went flying from the impact with Kale`s leg, bouncing off of the huge, glass-like cocoon of energy, his entire body gone numb from the shock it caused. Sparks of electricity flew off of his small body, and after several seconds of moving through the air like a stone from a catapult..._**]**   
  
- embedded in his shoulder.   
  
It was then that Kale started walking forward, picking up -   
  
** [**_... Sparks of electricity flew off of his small body, and after several seconds of moving through the air like a stone from a catapult..._**]**   
  
- speed. Bit didn`t know what he saw for a moment, and then -   
  
** [**_... Bouncing off of the cocoon of energy and moving through the air like a stone from a catapult..._**]**   
  
- came clarity, and with clarity, understanding. Kale jumped -   
  
** [**_... Bouncing off of the huge, glass-like cocoon of energy..._**]**   
  
_ "It just might work..."   
  
_ - and Bit steeled himself, literally tearing the dagger out of his own shoulder with a loud scream and leaning forward, putting every ounce of his remaining strength into throwing the weapon right into a series of mid-air flips -   
  
** [**_... Bouncing off of the cocoon of energy..._**]**   
  
- through the air -   
  
** [**_... Bouncing off like a stone from a catapult..._**]**   
  
- and passing under Kale`s jumping form with the speed of a rifle round, going straight into the energy cocoon with a final spin, landing right on the very butt of it`s grip and then rebounding like a bullet, slinging through the air with a whistle.   
  
"**_DAMN YOU!!!_**" Kale screamed, all too late realizing that he`d jumped into a trap.   
  
"You _lose_," Bit whispered out coldly, just as the knife _drove_ into Kale`s back, just left of the spine. The result was unbelievable, and the seeming incarnation of unstoppable destruction went screaming through the air, flying right over the edge of the crater from the sheer _force_ of the dagger alone, tumbling through the air before landing some two hundred feet straight down with the sound of glass shattering in an echo that carried around the crater and into the desert.   
  
"Let`s see you mock me now, you sorry _son of a bitch_..."   
  
With that, Bit Cloud fell onto his back and let out a final wheeze. The world went black a second later, even as the desert sun rose like a great king in the sky.   
  
  
** Intriguing.   
  
** "I almost thought you would want to step in."   
  
** As did I. It looks as though our gamble has paid off, though.   
  
** "So now we have a true victim, an unwilling killer, a hero, a psychopath and an inspiration."   
  
** Five wild cards in a stacked deck.   
  
** "Should we get involved now?" Madison asked, not really impatient, not even concerned for the wellbeing of _any_ of the people, or the Organoid, that had wound up involved in the brutal taste of Hell that had ended mere moments before. As far as she was truly concerned, they were merely means to an end. All she cared for was Roc.   
  
** Indeed. Do you want the honors, or shall I?   
  
** "Go ahead."   
  
With that, several miles away, Dana Masterson`s head shot up. She _knew_ to steer the Foe Hammer - which she, Katherine and Lars had been keeping in a steady hover over one of the vertical landing pands of the Garnhelm Base - into turning around, promptly moving at a relatively slow speed of several dozen miles per hour towards the site of where the battle had only just ended. She didn`t know why, she just _knew_.   
  
** Humans do not know how to guard their minds, it seems.   
  
** Madison didn`t respond with anything but a shrug.   
  
  
As the longest night in civilized history ended, the Raynos touched down on the road outside the Transtock Temporary Home for the Criminally Insane. By the time it had stopped moving, Jamie Hameros was gone and the Wild Eagle had taken over in a frantic sort of way. A pair of Gustavs sat outside the structure, each of them a deep, dark shade of green. Will ignored them, popping the cockpit open and jumping the entire distance down to the ground.   
  
Legs that normally would have gone numb from the force of landing merely felt a brief tinge of shock at the impact, the personality currently in control already taking over fully. Jamie was frantic, the Wild Eagle was the only one even vaguely coherent at the moment, and by the time he got to the door, he found that he was a bit late to stop everything.   
  
Bodies were everywhere. Some had obviously been there for an hour or two but many looked fresh.   
  
Literally jumping the way over several of the bodies though, Will ran forward, heedless of anything in his path. The error would cost _both_ of them deeply, for right as the Wild Eagle rounded another corner, the butt of a rifle slammed into his temple unexpectedly. Out like a broken lightbulb, Jamie Hameros` body slumped to floor in surprised unconsciousness.   
  
Fifteen minutes later, Brad Hunter touched down hard on the legs of the Pteras, which bent forward automatically as if preparing to take off again, only for it`s cockpit to pop open as Brad jumped down. His gun was in one hand, but it would do no good as the doors to the institution were kicked open a third time in one morning, three armed soldiers popping out in plain sight.   
  
With instincts hardened by an underworld past and sharpened through years as a Zoid Warrior, Brad deftly picked two of them off, but his gun literally exploded in his hand before he could nail number three, the round literally going down the barrel and blowing up on impact with the very bullet he was about to fire.   
  
"Surrender or die!"   
  
Tongue in cheek, the former mercenary raised his hands.   
  
"Good boy. Maybe I`ll get a raise outta this one..."   
  
As the remaining troop started to walk down the steps, the doors were kicked open yet again, and this time, two pairs of men emerged, followed by a woman and two more men, all of them armed but four of them carrying hostages. At least, if Brad was still _armed_, they would be hostages. One was a blue haired, tan skinned young woman in an inmate`s jumpsuit, the strait jacket that had recently been thrown around her currently being used to stifle her admittedly weakened protests. Hours without sleep, mental exhaustion and fear for the other captive kept that resistance to a minimum.   
  
Jamie was still unconscious, the Wild Eagle`s personality having lost it`s hold the moment the rifle had knocked him out. A trickle of blood still leaked down from one badly bruised temple, two of the soldiers were dragging him where the other two were just holding Leyla by the biceps of her arms.   
  
As it stood, they weren`t hostages because Brad was unarmed. All three of them were prisoners, nothing more.   
  
"Take the Zoids on one trailer, pack all three of the prisoners into the other," the woman ordered coldly, nothing even remotely feminine sounding in her voice. Two of the soldiers methodically walked towards Brad and jammed the tips of their rifles into his head, forcing his arms behind his back and roughly dragging him along.   
  
_ "So much for trying to play hero,"_ Brad muttered to himself in thought, gritting his teeth as he was lead off like a lamb to the slaughter.   
  
  
Romeo City. As night faded to morning, Leon Tauros stirred awake for the fifth time in the two hours he`d been able to get any sleep. A Godos to either side of his Blade Liger told him not to let his guard down too easily, he might have been working to protect the city out of the goodness of his heart but that didn`t mean he trusted anyone in it as far as he could throw them.   
  
The Red Blade growled lowly, shifting as if irritated. The air was so thick with so many emotions at once, that Leon probably could`ve cut it with a knife if he wanted. Fear, stress, anxiety, outright panic, sadness, anger, hatred and everything else, it ran the gauntlet for human feelings. Reality had only just started to set in for a lot of the people in Romeo City, the shock was wearing off and being replaced steadily by a growing apprehension, underlined with a vague sense of communal unity often seen during particularly traumatic periods of time.   
  
_ "So much for getting any more sleep,"_ Leon thought annoyedly, leering out over the desert and silently strumming his fingers over his left arm. The Zoid rumbled again, as if empathically sensing it`s pilot`s distress.   
  
"I`ll be fine. Just wish I could get some more rest," Leon replied in kind, still scanning the horizon with all the vigilance of a soldier, even though he actually lacked military experience. Several more minutes went by, and then a yawn stifled the silence of the cockpit, followed by several knocks on the Liger`s right paw. Leon looked down in that direction, spotting a familiar looking woman with green hair.   
  
"Coffee`s up!" Pierce shouted up at the head of the Blade Liger, looking a little worse for wear, herself. The Storm Sworder was 'parked' not too far back, on one of the now-abandoned roads leading into or out of the city, with Leon and the two Godos situated next to him standing right in front of it.   
  
"Why do I get the feeling this is going to be one of those days?" Leon asked himself while undoing his harness and flipping the cockpit open.   
  
  
Miles away, on the other hand, just over the enormous, ridge-type hill that half-circled the city, a force was gathering. It wasn`t as big as the numbers that were spared to tackle Bit Cloud, instead this group seemed more focused on carrying on a _real_ battle rather than a surprise raid or massacre. The Zoids themselves were practically built around the idea of doing just that - they massed in with around thirty Scout Foxes, each of which was the same build as the version Brad Hunter had been 'gifted' with for a month or two.   
  
In short: Thirty of the best small-sized Zoids that had ever been created were about to charge into battle. Their air support wasn`t too shabby either, a pair of Hammerhead I-G units - gunships. After that, there were close to sixteen Foxbats, and nearby to all of them was a specific Whale King.   
  
Type Nine, one of the two largest varieties alongside the Type Ten, able to carry up to a hundred Zoids on average with room for more with modifications. It was the Emerald Nightmare, Vilhelm Rommel`s personal flagship, having touched down on the ground sometime in the late night with darkness as a cover, unloading the assault force along with a final Zoid that was only now stepping down the great carrier Zoid`s jawline.   
  
Seconds passed, then, two hollow thumps sounded in the relative quiet of the desert, followed by the sounds of footsteps. Loud, dangerous and spiteful, yet at the same time defiant, but only to an extent.   
  
The blue Geno Breaker shifted through each step before settling down, all thirty of the Scout Foxes vanishing as their cloaks activated. In the cockpit, Bill Chapman sighed to himself bitterly, leaning back and trying to slip a finger under his forced collar. It was no good, the damn thing wouldn`t even budge.   
  
_ "I hate this..."   
  
_ "The attack will commence in one hour. Be prepared," a voice chimed irritatingly into the cockpit. Smooth, elegant and a bit regal, it was the same voice that Bill had come to utterly despise in the past few days, namely the voice of one Vilhelm Rommel, giving personal orders on the front lines of his own, deluded and utterly insane war of annihilation.   
  
There was a clicking sound, the communications switched off automatically and Bill Chapman was alone in the cockpit once more, not even an annoying voice to keep him company. He knew not to speak, the cockpit was probably bugged anyhow, but despite Rommel`s probable wishes, Chapman could still _think_ quite clearly.   
  
_ "God forgive me for what I`m about to do,"_ he thought with regret, leering at the top of the hillside and knowing that he would soon be on the road to becoming an unwilling mass murderer.   
  


_ End Chapter Five  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** *Takes finger off the AHBL button. For a few seconds.* >_> Need to give everyone a break, huh?  
  
**Illidan:** You forgot that good ol` Will E.(Wild Eagle) wracked up an impressive kill list too, 800+, I believe. Kale is somewhere around the 10,000(give or take a few) mark, Vilhelm`s probably not dirtied his hands enough to be directly accountable, Bit`s got at least 150 or so, plus the hundreds he wiped out with the Panzer when Bill was kidnapped in the middle of the second Blitz/Thunder battle. Chances are, very few of the dead went out with the chance to feel much pain :P  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** *Ding ding ding* Someone got it right! I already told Zinou, buuuut since you guessed on your own *Gives EA two cookies.* Kale`s l33tm0 ninja ski11z didn`t bail him out this time, I`m afraid. Though I intend to get a **lot** of mileage out of the battle`s aftermath in developing both of them. Kale`s finally tasted the bitterness of defeat, Bit`s stared into the abyss of what he **could have** and may yet become again. The experience is going to give me a ton of room to work with them, as well as room to work on Vega and Specular.  
  
**DJ Wolfwood:** Despite that you haven`t left a review lately: Expect the OC you requested the use of to be seen sometime in the next two chapters. Don`t expect much of a role, but he **will** appear. And for anyone else: This is a **one time** deal, don`t come asking for me to put your OCs into this story, I`m only doing this because the character fits a scene I have planned.  
  
As for the Lightning, Sabers, Three Snipers, Schlag, etc... Well, as Zinou told me: I can`t keep focused on the actions of every single character on planet Zi, so you`ll just have to settle for scant appearances at best for the time being. Harry Champ will also show up, eventually.  
  
That`s all for now folks, enjoy, leave a review and Sh33p out!  
  



	6. Numb

  
  
**Foreword:** Linkin Park - Numb only goes for the parts of the chapter involving Bit Cloud and/or Kale Obscura. Anything epic/militaristic/suicidal/hard and/or fast fits just about everywhere else.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
_ Numb_  
  
  
  


** [**_"**I`LL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!!!**"_**]**  
  
White. The ceiling was white. Tiled, too...   
  
It hurt just to breathe. It felt as though his body had been slashed repeatedly with knives made out of pure fire, and as much as it hurt to breathe, it hurt even more just to try and find the resolve to move. His clothing had changed, he was certain of that much. A hospital gown, apparently. His clothes - what were left of them - were hung up on the top of a rail that held a curtain around the bed he was lying in. Multiple IVs were linked into his skin - if not for the vague numbness he was feeling from god knows what painkillers they`d pumped him full of, _those_ would probably hurt too.   
  
His arm.   
  
At the lack of feeling, he reached over, patting where his right arm was. Several pokes at what felt like plastic, then a grab and a squeeze. A jolt of pain allowed a unique bit of comfort in the fact that his arm was still attached. It was still numb, but it was at least attached.   
  
Slowly, he leaned forward, or tried to, actually. The first attempt failed with a soft thump on the pillow, rustling the plastic beneath the bedsheets. The second attempt failed too, by the third he was starting to worry that he was too close to death to do anything but stare at the ceiling but on the fourth try, he succeeded.   
  
Something nudged vacantly at his senses. For a moment, all he felt was a vague emotion, unsure of what kind it was. It 'poked' and 'prodded' at his mind, and then he heard a voice. Soft, comforting, but also his own. Just a small bit deeper, more sophisticated in a way.   
  
_ You should rest. You went through a lot, even Van couldn`t have endured that kind of abuse.   
  
_ "Gflgho..." A pause. A snort and then a wad of what looked like a mixture of leftover mucus and blood landed somewhere on the floor as he sat up, absently picking the needles of the IVs out of his arms and hands. It took supreme effort even to hold himself up right, let alone speak and remove the medical gear as he did so.   
  
"How long was I out?" He asked, not really registering how he usually concealed his bond to the Liger Zero and it`s Organoid.   
  
_ All of fifty minutes, if that. Your body is tired and hurt, your heart is heavy with grief and your mind is ill at ease with worry and regret. Rest.   
  
_ "I can`t," he stuttered out exhaustedly. "... Kale... And Veg-"   
  
_ Vega is in the same room as you are, Kale is... Well...   
  
_ "Well?"   
  
_ Elsewhere. They didn`t give him the same kind treatment as the two of you. Now lay down_, Zeke ordered with authority, though Bit was in no shape to defy him. With a wheezing sigh, the Royal Cup champion fell over in exhaustion and passed back out.   
  
Outside the infirmary building though, a lone white Liger stood attentively, one of it`s 'eyes' turned to the hospital room that it`s pilot was recovering in, the other set towards the area outside the recently deployed perimeter wall, towards a distant glow near where the battle had played itself out. The Fury wasn`t anywhere in sight, but a blue form could faintly be seen within the Liger Zero`s enormous mouth, protectively withheld from the greedy hands and eyes of a desperate military. The form was Specular, herself still recovering from the energy drain that came with literally ripping loose of the Fury`s core in all of a few tensed seconds, let alone the loss of power that had come from taking a full fledged charged particle beam.   
  
Several specks were visible in the distance as well, though the Liger wasn`t paying any attention to them. Zeke already knew what they were coming for, and what they were. Whale Kings, four of them ranging from a Type II, one of the two smallest varieties, and the only dedicated gunship version of the Whale King`s design, a Type I and two Type VIIs, which ranked in as some of the largest models. All of them that could carry Zoids were bringing whatever they had aboard, every gun was primed.   
  
It was obvious that something was going to be happening _very_ soon.   
  
  
In an old prison cell though, these were the thoughts farthest from the mind of one Kale Obscura. In fact, just about _everything_ seemed quite far from the thoughts of the raven-haired, Raven-_looking_ young man. He was staring at the dull gray ceiling directly above him, alone and for the most part, surprisingly well off compared to his brutalized counterparts. How -   
  
** [**_Literally bathed in his own blood, the lone, half-dead figure in the crater forced his head out from the broken, glass-like dirt that had shattered around him. Spitting out broken up shards and sand, realization dawned upon him that he was still alive - if only because it hurt too much to be dead. A dull kind of pain washed over him with every labored breath, and with great strain, his half-useful arm reached around behind himself.   
  
Lying on his stomach after a two hundred or more foot tall from the force of a dagger that had been bounced off of an Organoid cocoon wasn`t something that Kale intended to be doing at the start of the night, but he was intent on making the best of it. With what strength he could still summon up, the blade was pulled from his flesh, issuing a gooey leak from the wound before the weapon was nonchalantly dropped into the glass.   
  
Everything was a painful, blurred haze as he struggled his still-useful arm back to a neutral position and started pushing, slowly forcing himself up out of a shallow body-shaped imprint in the glassy terrain of the crater, only to fall onto his more injured side after doing so. He didn`t even have the strength to scream.   
  
The glow of the cocoon - out of his own sight since he`d fallen into the crater - dimmed ever so slightly, a whisp of energy breaking it`s orbit and wobbling above the other three casualties of this most personal war, slipping down into the crater only to find itself held back. It hovered restlessly above Kale`s dying body, and with what remained of his few seconds of consciousness, he leered dryly to the right, spotting a dangerously contemplative looking Liger Zero. The same Zoid who`s back he`d broken weeks earlier.   
  
Shadow strived, but Kale`s life was really in Zeke`s hands this time. The Zero rumbled, but Kale passed out before he could see the confrontation end._**]**   
  
- or why -   
  
** [**_It`s not your time yet._**]**   
  
- he didn`t know, nor did he very much _care_ for that matter, at least when it came to the how-he-was-alive part of things.   
  
_ "I don`t understand."   
  
_ I know that already.   
  
_ "Why did he let me live?"   
  
_ Zeke is as illogical as they come. Just forget it and rest.   
  
_ "Rest?"   
  
_ In case you haven`t noticed, I`m still immobilized. Rest well, knowing that tomorrow, the battle will begin anew.   
  
His injuries were almost gone now, but scars remained. A shallow, barely visible one across his cheek, and a larger one across his shoulder. Part of him wearily guessed that Bit would end up recovering in much the same way, as even the vicious bruising from some of the more intense blows of the night - including Specular`s ambush or the countless kicks and punches to his head - wasn`t even visible anymore.   
  
A light groan came, and it brought also a smirk, and he turned over onto his side, shutting his eyes and falling asleep. Eerily as ever, his pose almost perfectly resembled that of Bit Cloud in reverse.   
  
  
Shots rang out around Romeo City. A tenuous peace shattered like glass in the shower of plasma that followed, from right in front of the eastern line of defense, the same line that the Red Blade Liger and Leon Tauros were positioned with. As luck would have it, the ambush was swift and precise enough that seven of the thirteen Zoids in the perimeter were gunned down by the time they could try fighting back, leaving only a Command Wolf, a Saber Tiger, two Heldigunners and the Liger to fire back in reply, with Pierce`s Stormsworder not having launched yet.   
  
The attackers were using cloaks. Cloaks had holes, holes that were visible when they opened fire. Leon spotted said-holes instantly, pulling the trigger with uncertainty the first time and successfully blowing another hole into one of those aforementioned cloaks. The whole, coincidentally, was also into the cockpit glass, killed the pilot instantly and leaving the virtually decapitated Scout Fox visible as it`s systems went down, slumping in defeat to the ground.   
  
A quick head count.   
  
_ "One, two, twenty-...nine,"_ Leon guessed correctly, swinging the Blade Liger to one side in the middle of a hop, landing on the Zoid`s foreclaws and skidding around in front of the Command Wolf, shield kicking on instantly as the majority of Foxes opened up in that direction. For several seconds, the shield held -   
  
"Get out from behind me!"   
  
- and then shattered, just as Leon himself jumped the Blade Liger out of the way again, the Command Wolf dodging to the side and opening up with it`s turreting gattling gun. Slugs the size of trash cans chanced a victory over durably lightweight armor, spraying the head of one of the remaining Scout Foxes. The Zoid took to the air in shock, exploding as one of the invisible Foxes behind it attacked again.   
  
"Twenty-eight," Leon mumbled as an afterthought, charging forward with a detached calm to his expression, blades swinging down and into attack mode. The calm didn`t last long at all though, and with a loud cry of battle befitting his ancestors, Leon Tauros entered the battle with relentless fervor.   
  
  
"What hit me?" A lazily pained voice asked, eyes cracking open with blurred results in the middle of a kind of room, namely a Gustav containment unit turned into a modular part of a transport. From the looks of things, this was a far more comfortable model than the one he`d been in during his last trip around the block in one of these things. The harnesses and the dual row of seats leading to a console at one end of the thing just screamed 'troop carrier,' though it wasn`t filled to even _half_ capacity from the look of things. Five peoples tops. Two had guns, the other two were seated to either side of him.   
  
"... Where am I?" He asked dryly, blinking the haze out of his vision and trying to rub his eyes only to realize he had handcuffs on, which had in turn been chained to the grips of the safety harness lowered around him.   
  
"Probably on the highway to Hell, if you ask me," a familiar, sardonic voice pointed out in absolutely cynical calm. "But at least it`s with me, right?" Another voice cut in, decidedly more cheerful and even a small bit reliant sounding.   
  
"Brad? Leyla?"   
  
"Ding ding ding," Brad chimed. "Yeah, it`s me," Leyla answered, and Jamie looked to the side to see that she was both wrapped in a straitjacket _and_ pinned in place by the safety harness that was being used to hold her in place. She probably could have broken loose if she was more in tune with herself, as Fiona or Riese had been, but unlike them, Leyla was still only vaguely learning about her own nature, let alone the abilities that very nature provided. Ancient Zoidians were naturally a far tougher, stronger people, they were also highly prone to telepathy, as their bonds to both Organoids and Zoids pointed out. The only reason Bit, Kale and Vega had all advanced so far compared to Leyla was because they all had Organoids, histories of prolonged stress and a number of other factors driving them forward.   
  
Of course Leyla, Brad and Jamie didn`t know these things. About all they knew was -   
  
"I came to try and rescue you," Jamie mumbled out disappointedly.   
  
"I came to try and rescue him," Brad joined in.   
  
"And I`m guessing-" Leyla was cut off.   
  
"You can easily see how that went. Good job, huh?" Brad asked annoyedly.   
  
"You tried," Leyla offered a shrug. Jamie smiled slightly, Brad however...   
  
"And you can see where that got us."   
  
Well, Brad was just being himself in this sort of situation: Less than optimistic.   
  
  
Another explosion filled the air, Leon Tauros counted about twenty-six Scout Foxes now - make that twenty-five. The Blade Liger skidded sideways to a dead stop, knocking one of the quick, mostly invisible Zoids right off of it`s feet, at least it would have. In reality, the attacker had become impaled on one of the Liger`s glowing, golden blades, and shots rang out again barely a second later as the Command Wolf burst into flames. The attackers came from above as well, fifteen of the Foxbat Zoids that Leon had encountered the previous evening, all flying out of formation and simply flying over the line he and the other defenders had formed on the eastern side.   
  
No help was coming, though. Leon had advised the city`s local Guardians(there were a minimum of three stationed in every major city on the planet) to hold their own lines at any cost, convinced that there might be more attacks planned to take advantage of everyone rushing to put out a single brushfire. Now, with Romeo City about to get bombed into oblivion, he realized just how rigid and unuseful that idea had been.   
  
And that was when a number of gattling gun rounds rained down into one of the Foxbats, scattering the entire group and causing their pilots to panic for a moment, veering from the city entirely. In the process, one of them flew a bit too close to the ground, and the eastern line`s second Saber Tiger made sure that the pilot paid for it with his life, lunging up from the ground and gutting the smaller Foxbat in mid-air with it`s dagger-like fangs, backflipping out of the collision and landing right as another Scout Fox briefly became visual, plasma already streaking at the Tiger -   
  
"I _need_ that guy, damn it."   
  
- only to be shot in mid-flight by a counter-bolt from the Blade Liger, altering the aim of the first bolt and the second and repeating the process several times until the entire stream had been diverted, passing by the Saber Tiger at an angle and giving it`s pilot just enough time to whip around and open fire, tagging the Scout Fox six times in a row with his triple shot cannon.   
  
Another Foxbat crashed not long after, the Stormsworder swooping right into it`s flight path at extremely low levels and pulling up at an impossible altitude of _under_ twenty feet with the drag from it`s turbulence dragging the other Zoid right into the ground. Pierce smiled vacantly to herself, almost dancing through a burst of fire from another of the remaining twelve aerial Zoids.   
  
And then a hail of missiles rippled through the air.   
  
The Stormsworder literally snapped straight up, dodging over the swarm with less than a second to spare as the two Hammerhead I-Gs hovered up over the battlefield like Apache helicopters, orbiting at it`s edge and throwing several volleys of anti-Zoid rockets down at the Heldigunner. The pilot was only barely swift enough to dodge them, plowing head-on into the side of the hill and then making a sharp right U-turn while moving down underground, the rockets blasting out a massive crater in the extended hillside.   
  
Another explosion followed seconds later, pieces of a Foxbat rained down, smoking and ablaze, several showing the signs of a swift blade cutting right through them. A silver blur moved over the battlefield, luring away several of the aerial Zoids and leaving only the Hammerheads and a lone Foxbat to continue providing air support to the invisible attackers that were the Scout Foxes.   
  
"This is nuts!" One of the Saber Tiger pilots exclaimed as his Zoid took a dozen shots into the side, flying off of it`s feet and landing right on top of a quickstop that had thankfully been abandoned since the previous evening. The local officials had possessed the foresight to move anyone who wasn`t fighting back by about three rows of cityline, forming an essentially dead bufferzone that could provide a temporary shield and obstacle course for ground attackers. It was also a line of cityscape plagued by rampant looting, but possessions could be replaced - lives couldn`t.   
  
"If you were nuts, you`d be running away!" Leon replied with the tone of a leader at war. "Now hold the damn line! _Nothing gets through, got that_?!"   
  
His words set the tone of the battle for the defenders, and almost as if envigorated by the orders alone, the Saber Tiger practically flew back out of the rubble, landing in a sprint and gunning down the leftover Foxbat with a roar. Almost as if choreographed to follow that action, gunfire exploded through the rubble, and one of the Hammerheads rocked in mid-air, it`s underside being raked with firepower. The pilot was skillful though, barely tilting to the right and smoothly sliding out of the way as the forward rocket launchers opened up, firing off a pair of the more powerful weapons in it`s considerable arsenal.   
  
The ground exploded, forming a crater down by almost thirty feet. The Heldigunner could barely be seen scampering through the dirt with just enough speed to have avoided the blast, leaving a briefly visible tunnel opening in it`s wake.   
  
Three rods-on-jet-engines tore through the air, stabbing like swords into the side of the low flying Hammerhead. They were only a precursor though, another blaring sonic boom howled through the battlefield, kicking up dust and blurring visuals as an orange headblade scythed vengefully along the top fin of the gunship Zoid, the upside-down Stormsworder twisting back up at the last second and swiftly dicing one of the Foxbats across the gut in the process. The green Zoid continued flying for a split second, then tumbled down to the ground in two, one of the pieces bouncing off of the _still_-flying Hammerhead and exploding next to it.   
  
That did the job, the first Hammerhead lost altitude and it also lost it`s directional control, blasting forward at full speed, where the Red Blade Liger finished it off, blades sticking straight up and tearing out the Zoid`s guts as it passed overhead, crashing into the ground and crumpling like a tin can before exploding in a bright fireball.   
  
"Hold them back at all costs, don`t let _any_ of them through!" Leon ordered sternly, swinging his blades straight forward over the Liger`s shoulders and perfectly gunning down a Scout Fox that had been creeping through the killzone towards the city. Briefly, he was exposed, but the Heldigunner saved the day, exploding out of the ground and shocking Leon as well, literally flying over the Red Blade and slamming back down through the ground, a charging Scout Fox skidding to a halt and falling feet-first into the hole in the process. The instant on-rush of sand and dirt held it there by it`s forelegs, and several shots tore out it`s guts from underground by the time that Tauros had overcome his own shock.   
  
_ "Can`t let that happen again, I don`t want to get nailed off my guard,"_ Leon thought tensely, swinging his blades back down and turning to the left to attack yet another Scout Fox, which had only vaguely become visible against the background of fire from the Hammerhead wreckage.   
  
  
** [**_"I`ve been waiting for this for years. And I never even knew it until tonight. All I wanted, for two years was-"   
  
"- that one fight that brings out your own inner demons and forces you to confront them. Nothing left to hide-"   
  
"- nothing left to lose."   
  
"Everything to gain."_**]**   
  
A groan, exhausted, pained.   
  
** [**_Like an agile predator, he rose, turning to face his dangerous prey only to find his prey replaced by another predator, something so malignant, so evil that he could only scarcely comprehend it`s presence. Like a deer caught in headlights, he stared into the eyes of something that embodied the abyss of demons that he so dangerously leaned over, something so demonic that it shocked his entire being to the very core.   
  
He fought Kale Obscura, and yet, he saw himself._**]**   
  
"Nnnnn... Damn..."   
  
** [**_"To be a Zoid Warrior, one must have courage, honor, and a sense of justice."_**]**   
  
A figure leaned upright for the second time in one morning.   
  
** [**_"**IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!**"_**]**   
  
"Whafghn..." A jumble of a word that was intended to start a question. A slacked jaw to go with it.   
  
** [**_"Courage, honor, and a sense of justice."_**]**   
  
"... Shit."   
  
** [**_He saw himself._**]**   
  
A sigh of exhaustion and resignation.   
  
** [**_"**Courage**, **honor**, and a sense of **justice**."_**]**   
  
He wouldn`t be getting any rest this morning. Sweat, cold and tired, rolled down along bandaged cheeks.   
  
** [**_Where he saw the most horrid demon that could ever take the form of any human being, he saw **himself**._**]**   
  
_ "I`m not a monster..."   
  
****_ [_Surrounded by over a hundred dead enemies. Alone. Bloodied by shrapnel wounds. Hyperventilating. Sweating. Crying. **Laughing**._**]**   
  
_ "... Am I?"_ Bit asked himself, placing his head briefly in his hands and waiting for a calm, reassuring 'no' from Zeke.   
  
It never came. With silence though, came restlessness. With restlessness came a reserve of energy, and with that reserve came a willingness to use it.   
  
Standing up, he walked over to the clothing that had been haphazardly hung over the rail, pulling it down and removing the nightgown, at the same time sorting through the small mess for his boxers.   
  
  
Outside, the Liger Zero stood solemnly, glaring at the dozens of Zoids now gathering on the smoothly paved grounds of Garnhelm Base, each of which was practically getting a king`s welcome by the now-overworked maintenance crews. The list ran the gauntlet, from Bombard Gustavs to a Europlas or three, Aerosaurs, Gunsnipers, several Shield Ligers, Command Wolves, Saber Tigers, Dibisons, a few Gojulas, along with several Iron Kong Mark VIs. It was obvious that this was largely a Republican-commanded operation, whatever it was, mainly since this was also an incident closer to Republican territory.   
  
Specular stirred somewhat in the Liger`s jaws, but remained unconscious. The shock to her system had been considerable, even Zeke would have probably required a chunk of Zoid Magnite just to _survive_, but something else was driving Specular on. That something was an eleven year old boy lying half-dead in a hospital bed in the building that Zeke was standing closely to like a male lion protecting his pride from any potential challengers.   
  
  
A flare of gold, and with it came a clash of blood red and emerald green. The Blade Liger touched down hard on all fours, arcing into a wide turn as Scout Fox number twelve went down in a blaze of glory, briefly becoming visible, then invisible again before outright exploding, the parts raining down in a hail of visual distortions before the effects of the cloaking device fully wore off.   
  
_ "Just eight-"   
  
_ An explosion, another Scout Fox went flying through the air and the ground beneath it shattered into a blistering hail of machine gun rounds. The Zoid`s brutalized carcass landed with a crash and slowly smoked, not quite exploding into flames just yet.   
  
_ "Seventeen left,"_ Leon corrected himself, counting only the Scout Foxes, despite the Hammerhead that was still bombing the daylights out of the morning warzone. Again, the Blade Liger dodged as a hail of rocketry blazed by, tagging the downed Scout Fox and erasing it from existence in an enormous blast. By the time Leon had touched down, he was given a split second to analyze the situation.   
  
One Saber Tiger, the Heldigunner, Pierce and himself. The other Saber Tiger had been knocked out of commission while pummeling an errant Scout Fox that had wandered too close to the city, but it was still repairable and the pilot still alive, just out of the fight for the time being. A humane part of him wanted to stand guard around the downed Saber Tiger but his tactical side kept him in the fight - one Saber Tiger and it`s pilot _weren`t_ worth forfitting the lives of a few hundred civilians.   
  
Another blaze from above, a Foxbat crashed and burnt as Pierce swooped back down at full speed, levelling off at another impossibly low flight level and then ascending back up at the last second, right in the path of the remaining gunship. The larger Zoid tumbled harshly through the air but refused to go down, righting itself after several seconds and tilting downward, the entire battlefield getting sprayed with machine gun rounds an instant later.   
  
Leon was lucky that his shield had recharged, if not for that, he would have been killed. The Heldigunner survived by manuevering further underground and the remaining Saber Tiger had the sense to just run like hell. Pierce on the other hand...   
  
"You`d _think_ they`d have the decency to go down after getting hit by a sonic boom," she complained, folding the Sworder`s wings back up and tilting around in mid-air as her momentum faded and gravity kicked in. Wings extended, the claws at the middle of those wings folded down and a group of six machine guns was exposed, opening fire at once with the main gattling gun. The Hammerhead rocked violently from the assault, it`s tail popping open afterward to reveal twenty-four missiles of some sort, all of which launched at once.   
  
"... Shit," Pierce muttered, swooping up and catching one of the last three Foxbats in her exhaust, sweeping it off course and allowing the poor bastard to take the brunt of a few of the incoming missiles. A sonic burst later, the Stormsworder was bylining for the upper atmosphere, slicing another Foxbat`s head off and allowing it`s body to knock out a few more of the missiles with a thunderous blast.   
  
On the ground though, things were still getting increasingly desperate. Leon grit his teeth, pulling the trigger and blowing the head off of another Scout Fox, raising his shield again and lunging forward. Another Fox materialized, thrown into the air from the impact and shot down by the Heldigunner before it could hit the ground. The Saber Tiger practically flew overhead from the right a second later, landing with a loud crash of metal and machinery before jumping again, a brutalized Scout Fox lying in it`s wake.   
  
"Fourteen," Leon mumbled to himself, swinging his blades forward for a stab or two and charging into combat again...   
  
  
The sound of something peeling alerted one of the nurses. Slowly, the middle aged woman made her way through the open infirmary, peeking into the curtained off sections one by one before arriving at the last two, just in time to see one of their two newest patients slowly peeling the bandaging from around his forehead. It made her gasp in surprise because this patient had effectively been two steps short of dying less than two hours ago.   
  
Now he was almost perfectly healed aside from the numerous rips and cuts to his clothing. There was also a shallow, barely visible scar on one of his cheeks.   
  
"How in the name of God?"   
  
"Ask him," Bit replied, motioning out the window with a thumb towards the Liger Zero, already well on his way to leaving the room. The nurse, for what it was worth, just stood there in muffled shock, watching a guy who`d been close to becoming a corpse earlier in the same morning waltzing his way over to one of the other curtain-rooms without another word.   
  
What he saw disturbed him greatly.   
  
His memories of the events leading up to the end of the previous evening were still fresh. A bit blurry, but fresh. Among those memories was one of a bloodied heap of something in a purple-and-black or blue-and-black jumpsuit with white gloves and black hair, but he hadn`t been paying enough attention at the time to recognize just _what_ and _who_ that heap was.   
  
Now, however, he recognized that heap quite clearly.   
  
Vega Obscura lay, unconscious and bandaged up to high hell and then some, an oxygen mask over his face, numerous IVs running all over his arms and chest. Internal damage had been severe, physical trauma was also bad, and relative to his smaller body size, he`d lost at least the same amount of blood that Bit and Kale both had. Almost anyone else save for his own older brother, Bit Cloud, Madison Rose, Leyla Tsun and Sarah Obscura would`ve been dead by now, but Vega was still holding on from the looks of things.   
  
Bit grimaced.   
  
If Kale was capable of doing this sort of thing face-to-face, was Bit capable of doing it too?   
  
No answer from Zeke, no answer from his newly over-burdened conscience.   
  
"Get well soon, King," he mumbled aloud, giving a thumbs up to the unconscious youth before leaving, heading for the room`s exit. The nurse was _still_ standing there in dumb shock at the very sight of him.   
  
  
One of the Scout Foxes halted, the ground in front of it explading from several shots by the Saber Tiger`s gattling gun, but a second`s mistake in trying to avoid one attack lead to a far more severe blow as the tail of the Heldigunner ripped out of the ground, the blades on the tip missing at first only to come back down like a guillotine, slicing through the neck of the Scout Fox and beheading it in an instant before passing back down into the sands as if it had never even been there to begin with.   
  
That brought the attackers` ground numbers to nine. Leon smirked mirthlessly, allowing himself a small bit of pride in having succeeded this far, but something snapped him back to reality before it could turn into a mistake, and the Red Blade jumped through the air, the ground beneath it exploding from a dozen rockets, machine and gattling gun rounds the size of trash cans raining down in the Zoid`s wake.   
  
"Booster on," Leon said to himself, the intensity having long since fallen to a detached, cool demeanor of thoughtful actions and reactions. Where a pilot like Bit Cloud or Vega Obscura would have fought on raw feeling and emotion, Leon Tauros was far more calculating and skillful. Less willing to throw himself at an enemy with everything he had at once, and right now, that was paying off greatly in the fact that he was even alive. Seven against forty-seven were _not_ a betting man`s odds, after all.   
  
A blast of hot white from the Liger`s back, the booster had activated, and Leon swivelled it to the left almost on instinct, hurling the Zoid out of the line of the Hammerhead`s fire and landing at just the right angle to take an awkwardly made aim with one of his blasters. A second spelled the difference between victory and defeat on a battlefield - in war, a second spelled the difference between getting to celebrate with friends or having them lament over you at your funeral. In this case -   
  
"Eat this!"   
  
- a second also spelled the difference between Leon and the unfortunate crew of the Hammerhead, as three pulsed bursts of plasma blazed out of the Blade Liger`s right blaster, slipping through the air in a straight line and nailing the gunship Zoid right in the cockpit. The first shot was absorbed by armor, the second shot blew a hole through that same armor and killed most of the crew and the third shot finished the job, screaming in and incinerating the last few members of the Zoid`s crew and detonating the equivelent of it`s brain.   
  
The Hammerhead`s engines cut out, it glided through the air and smashed into the ground with a thunderous explosion of flame and shrapnel, briefly shaking the entire battlezone and throwing the Saber Tiger straight up and down into one of the second row-buildings of the city, thankfully it had already been evacuated like the rest. Almost in concert, the last Foxbat dropped like a stone to the ground, exploding with a small shock than that of the Hammerhead.   
  
"I`m out of ammo!" Pierce announced annoyedly.   
  
"Then go back and reload, I think we can probably handle it from here," Leon ordered, still in as much command of the whole mess as he had been from the start. More shots tore through the dirt, another two Scout Foxes became visible as their insides were mangled, exposing them also to shots from the Blade Liger`s dual impact cannon. Each round hit the heads, and each time it happened, the pilots were killed.   
  
  
_ "Can we just hurry up and leave?"   
  
No.   
  
"Why not?"   
  
_ The Liger Zero tilted it`s head down, Bit was briefly able to see something blue held protectively in it`s jaws, and gave only a slight nod a second later, followed by an annoyed sigh.   
  
_ We`ll be able to leave as soon as she wakes up.   
  
_ "That`ll do," Bit mumbled aloud, scratching the side of his head and then looking back up. "My clothes still in there?"   
  
_ We left too quickly to bring anything with us.   
  
_ "... That`s right. Crap," he grumbled out again, slapping himself on the side of the head and regarding the worse-for-wear clothes he was currently garbed in. "Any ideas?"   
  
_ Look behind you, for one. And you might want to put your hands up, too.   
  
_ "Eh?"   
  
A thud of several pairs of clothing, Bit blinked and turned around, a shirt and a pair of baggy, gray pants tossed haphazardly his way, a pair of boots landing with thumps at his feet. He was only barely sensible enough to catch the weighted down armored shirt that smacked into him a second later. The Bit Cloud of the Royal Cup Tournament would`ve fallen over in surprise, the current one merely blinked again and looked at the young woman standing across from him, smoking a cigarette.   
  
"Heard about what you did for Vega. Took your clothes while you were out and matched `em up to your size since I didn`t have anything better to do," Katherine Takahori exclaimed nonchalantly with a shrug. "They gave us free reign on any spare uniforms they had, I figured you wouldn`t turn down the help," she added as an afterthought at his curious gaze.   
  
"Ah... Thanks?" He asked.   
  
"Don`t mention it," she answered, perhaps a bit coldly, perhaps just a bit apathetic. Either way, the woman walked off before he could question her further. Tiredly, Cloud pried the clothing off of himself and leered at the holster still attached to his belt, noting that it was empty.   
  
_ I took the liberty of bringing it with me.   
  
_ "Good," he muttered, not wanting to lose his only keepsake of his grandmother. Without another word, Bit looked around and walked his way over to the small locker room usually reserved for on-base Zoid pilots. The fact that the lock was off was evidence that everyone was in a frantic rush to get ready, the fact that the room was half-filled with men and women in various stages of undress and redress was also proof of that. Not quite used to changing around a number of people - particularly when at least half of them looked like they could kick his ass into his throat with minimal effort - Bit made his way to a relatively out-of-sight corner and switched clothing.   
  
When he emerged about two minutes later, his normal clothes were draped over one arm, the empty holster of the Handleblade still in place at the back of his belt, sneakers held in one hand. No one really noticed him, a mixed blessing. While it meant he blended in quite nicely, it also meant that he had the risk of getting ordered into action and then having to explain that he wasn`t _actually_ a soldier, just an escaped hospital patient.   
  
On the plus side, as he stepped back up to the foreclaws of the Liger Zero and spotted his reflection in the golden metal of the claws, he found he looked quite nice in military clothing. The t-shirt was worn under the armored vest, which was pretty much the same type that had once been worn by Van Fleiheit, although Bit`s was a size bigger since he was about a head or so taller than his ancestor had been. The pants were comfortable, not to mention a good bit easier to move around in than his old jeans, but the boots needed a breaking in. The last touch happened to be the gloves, which were the same ones he`d spent the majority of the past few days wearing, though he wasn`t wearing them at the moment.   
  
"Hmm... Whaddaya think, Zeke?"   
  
_ Deja vu all over again, Van.   
  
_ "... That a good or a bad thing, partner?" Bit asked, glancing up at the Zoid`s head as it tilted to the side, the Handleblade slipping out between the Liger`s teeth and falling right into Bit`s free hand, then finding it`s way back to the holster.   
  
_ ... Probably good, but I`m not quite sure I can bear anymore comments on salted Papayas as an aphrodisiac.   
  
_ "... **_EH?!_**"   
  
_ You **don`t** wanna know.   
  
_ A mortified expression on his face, Bit only nodded and beckoned the Zoid to lower it`s head again. The cockpit flipped open automatically and the blonde casually lumped his old clothes into the pilot`s seat, feeling around his new pants and eventually finding the front pockets. They were a lot bigger and slightly lower than he was used to, but they weren`t too bad. Without a word, he crammed a glove into either pocket and then looked around.   
  
A mobilization was taking place and it was going at a fevered pace. Men and women rushed by, mechanics and pilots and everyone else. Some were dragging ammunition carts, others were driving runway cars and towing Gustav trailers that were carrying around aerial Zoids. The majority of the Zoids that Bit could make out were geared more towards assaults or general, _heavy_ combat, the kind of stuff that happened in wars of survival. A good many of them - like the Europlas, Bombard Gustav and the Gojulas units - were also geared toward shelling operations.   
  
"What the hell is going on?" Bit asked vacantly, staring as a number of Command Wolves scampered by towards an armament facility. Zeke rumbled indecisively.   
  
_ Deja vu all over again_, the Organoid repeated with something the blonde vaguely identified as a bit of contempt mixed with annoyance.   
  
"Must be somethin` bi-"   
  
** [**_A gigantic purple diamond stood behind Kale, ominous. Whisps of energy orbited around it, ascending with every passing second. A veiling glow of pink and crimson passed from the edges, it looked like a malevolent glass construct of some sort._**]**  
  
Zeke rumbled again.   
  
_ Now do you understand?   
  
_ "Not qui-" He was cut off again.   
  
** [**_A gigantic, crimson diamond stood in the middle of a canyon, being shelled in futility by well over two-hundred of the best Zoids available for the attack. Fear and concern were palpable on the faces of everyone in the command room, everyone but a single young man. He was a bit on the short side, brown, spikey hair kept in a semi-ponytail and dressed in an outfit that much resembled that which Bit was wearing at the present. On his face was a look of mixed horror tempered by a courage that the world wouldn`t see again for centuries.   
  
One thought, it was all that he could hear even in the silence of everyone else speaking at the survival of the enormous diamond. It was simple, blunt and to the point.   
  
"It`s evolving to match his potential as a pilot. This is __not_ good."**]**   
  
Bit stumbled briefly, glaring up annoyedly at the Zoid. "Will you stop doing that?!"   
  
_ Just making a point.   
  
_ "I get the idea. So this is all just a wild goose chase, huh?"   
  
_ They`d be better off focusing on an enemy they can actually defeat. That or killing Kale and then pulling back for the chance of an ambush against Shadow when he drops his guard.   
  
_ Shocked recognition followed, and silence as well.   
  
"Kale`s alive?" Bit asked, but it wasn`t Zeke who answered.   
  
"And in holding."   
  
The blonde turned around, as a result, he was confronted by a man who stood around the same height as Brad, six feet, three or four inches or so, Bit guessed, but a good deal more muscular. A military man from the looks of things, somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-five, even if he looked like he could`ve passed off as someone in his early thirties from the wear and tear visible in his eyes. Not someone to trifle with either, there was an underlying tone of violence in his voice, the kind of someone who had way too much pride for his own good. That or the old big-with-little-man-syndrome thing, one or the other.   
  
Instantly though, Bit knew what to say.   
  
"Where?"   
  
"You aren`t military, you don`t have the clearance," the man grit out in reply. Bit grimaced, mentally putting his foot down before speaking again.   
  
"Military? No, I`m not military. But I _am_ the guy who put him in here to begin with, so if you`d be so kind..."   
  
"Bullcrap. Now, I`m going to have to ask you just why you`re in a military uniform without any authorization, or is it Halloween for asshats?"   
  
Bit twitched slightly. "Look, _pal_, I`m not going to fucking shit around here. I killed a _hundred and fifty people last night_, what`s one more to the pile?" He asked with a dangerous glare that resembled the same one as Kale often threw at his next victims, even if they never saw it. The man flenched under that kind of gaze, backing off ever so slightly, only to lash out with a punch a second later. It was a reflex action, of course.   
  
It was also a fairly stupid move. Bit caught his arm and yanked it forward, forcing the man to punch right into the concrete wall with enough force to bruise or bust his knuckles instantly.   
  
"Now, _where is he_?" Bit asked again, flinging the larger man right off his feet and glaring down at him murderously. Several of the mechanics paused briefly, watching as one of the most violent people on the base got smacked around like a little kid. He straightened up though, clasping onto his hand annoyedly and shaking the pain out, just about ready to lash out again before the Liger`s growling interrupted his attempts.   
  
"Name`s Jesse Marcai," he muttered out, straightening up and glaring down into the eyes of the other. "Bit Cloud," the blonde answered in kind. "He`s in the main command center, P.O.W. area, level three, room thirteen," the newly identified pilot exclaimed, turning around and walking away a second later. No one bothered getting involved after that, it was actually a pretty _good_ thing to see Mister Violence(that _was_ his current callsign, after all, the old one had been Jesse James) getting knocked down a peg.   
  
That said, Bit glanced around for a building that screamed 'main command center.' He didn`t need to see a sign to spot it, instead just glancing at the tallest, most prominent building within the outer walls, then glancing down to one of the signs over it`s front door, which read 'Command and Control.'   
  
"Can they get any more obvious?"   
  
  
A final screech of charged metal against metal, with the weaker of the two forces yielding in a horrendous flash of fire and light, two severed chunks of a Zoid core tearing out from between the sections of the last Scout Fox, flying free into the air as actual cores and landing with a shatter as half-spherical stones. The Zoid itself exploded by the time that Leon and the Red Blade hit the ground with a skid, blades swinging straight up and back into neutral.   
  
He was out of ammo, his Zoid had some minor damage since he`d spent the majority of the battle dodging around too quickly to take many real hits and he was practically exploding with a mixture of excitement and tiredness. Adrenaline could only propel someone for so long, after all, before the key lacks of food, sleep and a hot shower kicked in. With a sigh though, Leon pulled his sleeved arm up and wiped across his brow, laughing an unusually whimsical chuckle of victory as he did so.   
  
The Heldigunner rose from the sands a few seconds later. Now that he could actually see it as more than a blur of movement in the air or diving into the sands, Leon could make out numerous smaller pieces of damage to it`s armor, the barrel of it`s main gun was steaming a light mist and it`s tailblades looked as though they needed to be sharpened again, but for the most part, it was utterly unscathed.   
  
"I`d say we pulled that off nicely," the Zoid`s pilot commented with relief, and though Leon was a little embittered at having lost over a half a dozen to his own side in the process, he had to agree, if only to keep from driving himself insane from the tense feeling all over his body.   
  
"Agreed," he finally let out, forcing himself to relax a small bit. "What`s your Zoid`s condition?" He asked.   
  
"Pretty close to green on everything but my weapons," the Heldigunner pilot replied. Leon nodded to himself.   
  
"Go back to one of the shops for repairs, see if you can get a Gustav or two out here for the Tigers."   
  
"And you?" The pilot asked. He didn`t exactly _have_ to take orders here, but Leon had pretty much emerged as the only real _leader_ left, aside from the Guardians, and they were busy along the other fronts, however peaceful those were.   
  
"I`ll stay here and put in the call for reinforcements," the Blade Liger pilot finally replied, relief evident in his voice. The Heldigunner pilot sounded off something akin to a 'yes, sir' and turned his Zoid around scurrying towards city limits slowly to weave through the streets without hitting anything. And then it stopped instantly, Leon heard a faint ping on his scanners but his eyes were directed elsewhere, namely the furious red glow coming from the side of the hill, which intensified more by the second before finishing off, forming into a perfect circle which in turn liquified slowly.   
  
His heart skipped a beat, the Heldigunner whipped around and Leon grit his teeth together so hard that his jaw hurt. Slowly, ever so slowly, the artificially formed lava dripped away, until finally a circular hole had been burnt right into the side of the enormous hill that half-circled the city on it`s eastern, northern and southern fronts, exposing only a harsh glare of the sun.   
  
And then a shadow stepped into sight. Slow, ominous, menacing to the extreme. Against the golden-yellow background of the morning sun, it looked black. Only the intense blue glare of the eyes stood out against the rest of the silhouette, which looked more like a murderous demon hellbent on storming the gates into Heaven itself.   
  
A single horn extended from the head, set back along several others like a crest, crab-like pincer claws held out to either side of some sort of engine block atop it`s back, guns rested on it`s thighs and each arm was tipped with three razor-like fingers on smaller grappler hands. The entire world went silent, and for a time, all that Leon could hear was the slow thumps of each step as the slaughterbeast made it`s way through the gate, impervious, it seemed, to the very fires it had probably created.   
  
When it came to a stop after passing the wall-like hill, it bent forward, then threw it`s head back in an earth shaking roar. It was audible even a mile into the city, rattling Pierce, the Guardians, every local and visiting pilot and every civilian to the very core, instilling in many an undeniable terror that could scarcely be believed even if it was seen in their eyes.   
  
Couples, friends and families that had the fortune of being together hugged each other relentlessly, feeling it was probably their last chance to do so, pilots and individuals without that luxury were left to court their own darkened thoughts as what felt like the truthful end of the world was about to rain all hell down on their very heads.   
  
And then Leon flipped a switch, opening up the broadband.   
  
"Everyone stay back. This is an enemy none of you can handle," he announced bluntly, and as the roar of one death machine came to an end, a thread of hope was struck loudly when the Red Blade Liger answered in kind, meeting one thunderous roar with another, one that was equally intense, knocking back the fears of many and assailing the confidence and the conscience of one.   
  
With death in his eyes, Bill Chapman cracked his neck to either side.   
  
With heroism burning in his soul, Leon Tauros fixed his hands tightly to the controls.   
  
Everyone in Romeo City held their breath at once, and the Red Blade Liger charged forward to meet the Blue Geno Breaker head-on in an eerily terrifying repetition of history.   
  
  
"- _**IT, ANSWER ME!!!**_"   
  
"Aw, but I have a visitor!"   
  
"... **_WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!_**"   
  
"Your worst nightmare. Just. Like. _Me_."   
  
"Ghhh... That does it-"   
  
Bit Cloud watched as Major Conrad Robertson stormed away from the barred door of Kale Obscura`s cell, kicking his own chair over in the process. For a moment, the blonde hesitated to speak, unwilling to blow the fragile amount of cover that he had thanks to the uniform that he`d been given, but conscience and a desire to _not_ see a few thousand people get killed because of a bit of command structure oversight were enough to break that hesitation, and his arm shot out, a hand clasped firmly around the Major`s wrist.   
  
"_Let. Go._"   
  
"No amount of firepower you put against that thing is gonna make any difference right now, you should clear out the entire base and get the hell outta dodge while you still can," Bit suggested wisely from the knowledge that Zeke had given him. Conrad only gave an angered huff and jerked his hand free.   
  
"Who the hell do you think you are to be giving _me_ orders, soldier?"   
  
Bit shrugged. "I`m not a soldier. Someone just gave me the clothes," he explained with a sigh. Conrad twitched angrily. "Then what the _**HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN HERE?!**_"   
  
"He came to see me," an amused voice sounded from cell number thirteen, which was coincidentally the only cell with an occupant in it.   
  
"... Do you know that monster?" Conrad asked, tone softening to a threatening, strained-but-low voice.   
  
"I`m the one who put him here," Bit answered. Conrad almost laughed. _Almost_.   
  
And then Kale cut in again. "That he is. Bit Cloud, Royal Cup Champion, friend of my half-dead little _snot_ of a brother and _officially_ the biggest _pain in my ass_ that`s ever _existed_."   
  
Conrad`s jaw sagged. Bit smirked in a disturbing manner, ushering the shocked-senseless Major out of the room and then shutting the door in without another word, turning back with a grimace, his brief burst of confidence leaking away to caution and even a bit of contempt, met only by a near audible smile from his ruthless enemy, who sat still in his cell.   
  
Bit tipped the chair back up onto all four legs, sitting down uneasily and staring relentlessly through the bars at Kale, who was seated on the cell bed in much the same way, only replying with a crooked, smug grin that could put the fear of god into an athiest.   
  
"Hnnn..."   
  
"Let me guess..."   
  
"I`ve become so numb to the bloodshed from last night..."   
  
"I can`t feel it anymore either."   
  
"I`m tired of the headgames, Kale..."   
  
"Oh, but you`re _so_ much more aware, aren`t you?"   
  
"Aware of what?"   
  
"You tell me," Kale smirked, getting right into his enemy`s head like it was nothing.   
  
"All I want to do-" "- is be more like _me_, and less like _you_. You just don`t know it yet."   
  
A pause of tense silence.   
  
"You`re wrong. I`ll prove it to you even if it kills us both."   
  
"Oh?"   
  
"And I know, I may end up failing too," Bit cut off the other before he could even try to spin his words around. Even now they mirrored each other, for even as Kale got into Bit`s weaknesses like a maggot to a corpse, Bit drove into Kale`s like a shovel through soft mud.   
  
"You were just like me once, even with someone disappointed with you."   
  
"_Don`t_ bring Vega into this," Kale sneered. "I`m through fucking around, Cloud. The Backdraft Group and Vega can both go to Hell for all I care, _you_ are my objective now."   
  
"And you`re not going to stop until you kill me, are you?" Bit asked, narrowing his eyes.   
  
"No matter how many body bags I fill in the process," Kale snapped back, matching the other`s expression so perfectly that even the scars across their cheeks lined up exactly.   
  
"I`ve become so numb," Kale growled. "I can`t feel you there," Bit shrugged. "I`ve become tired," the blonde added. "But so much more aware," Kale smirked. "You`re becoming this," he added but this time he was cut off. "All I want to do is be more like _me_ and less like you."   
  
Silence again.   
  
"How long until it finishes?"   
  
"It?"   
  
"Shadow."   
  
"My, how_ever_ did you guess his name?"   
  
"Zeke told me."   
  
"The sins of the forefathers, huh?" Kale chuckled dimly. "How long?" Bit asked firmly this time. Kale smirked grimly, tilting his head from side to side and speaking in synch with his movements. "Tick," to the right. "Tock," to the left, and he kept saying those exact words with no pause, not even to breathe. Bit reached behind himself, and a click echoed in the hall and the rooms, bouncing hollow along the walls and the bars.   
  
Silence. Kale spoke again.   
  
"Want to finish it now?" He asked decisively.   
  
"No."   
  
"In three days, you`re going to be living on borrowed time," Kale announced. "That`s all I needed to know," Bit replied, standing up straight and walking to the door, one hand extending up over his shoulder and one middle finger extending up from the rest of the hand, pointed in his mirror image`s general direction.   
  
"See you in Hell, Bit Cloud," Kale said.   
  
"I`ll bring the marshmellows, Kale Obscura," Bit replied in kind, flipping the door open and stepping out.   
  


_ End Chapter Six  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** I just can`t seem to run out of shit to fling at the fan, huh? :P  
  
**Illidan:** Sorry I wasn`t terribly conversational, I`m not exactly King Social, so yanno. That said, glad you enjoyed everything so far.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Got to you via IMs :P  
  
**DJ Wolfwood:** Hope you don`t mind any changes that`ve happened to Jesse(Jesse **is** the correct spelling for the male version of the name, btw), but he`s only appearing as a minor character for a few chapters so I felt the need to alter him a small bit.  
  
**Zinou:** I won :p  
  
**Everyone in General:** **PLEASE** leave some reviews if you liked the story so far, I like hearing from you all directly via IMs and e-mails sometimes, but nothing gets more people reading like a good review count and word of mouth. Like the story? Tell a friend! Leave a review, it may tempt a few fangirls to read and thoroughly break their widdwe hearts *Cackles.* :D  
  
Anywho, that`s all for now. Hope everyone liked/was slightly weirded out by Kale and Bit essentially speaking out some of the verses of a Linkin Park song while screwing with each other`s heads, and hopefully this was worth the wait.  
  
As always, enjoy, leave a review, and Sh33p out. See ya next time!  
  



	7. Cataclysm

  
  
**Foreword:** G Gundam - Intense Battle fits just about all of the Leon-Bill fight. Pick your own for everything else :P  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Cataclysm   
  
  
  


A burst of jet engines, a roar of metal on metal. An impact, another roar, but this one of a shared war cry. Two pilots lashed out, a hail of gunfire erupted, a dodge followed and a rain of plasma lit the ground ablaze for several seconds. An enormous burst of speed, something flew through the air and a thunderous impact followed suit, energies clashing in a furious gridlock between two awesome fighting machines, but only for a moment.   
  
A swish of air, a crack of thunder, one slipped back, tilting sideways, the other lunged forward as if headbanging, and blades clashed fiercely. For a moment, they were locked in position, the Geno Breaker`s horn-blade inched back into a stalemate by one of the Red Liger`s blades, each weapon glowing tremendously. The Breaker growled, the Liger replied in kind and the pilots said nothing, but Bill raked clear of the blade a second later, the right pincer stabbing forward in a blur.   
  
The Red Blade dodged though, booster swinging up out of it`s hiding place as Leon jumped to the left, then jumped forward and landed on his Zoid`s foreclaws, swinging around perfectly and then igniting the Liger`s booster in a blast of white and blue flame. The attack would`ve cut a trench into the right leg of the Geno Breaker, but Bill Chapman was more skilled than Leon had thought, powering on the boosters on his left side - leg and back alike - and swinging around, right in front of the Blade Liger.   
  
The two clashed again, and the Zoids locked fangs with each other, the larger Geno Breaker swiftly flinging the Blade Liger straight up into the air and issuing out a roar, leg-jets igniting in reverse this time as the large blue Zoid went flying backwards into the air, firing off the guns on either leg in perfect timing. With a series of explosions, the Red Blade tumbled from the air and landed harshly on all fours, Leon`s skills barely making the save while Bill touched back down, already having switched the direction of his thrusters by the time he finished landing.   
  
The Geno charged forward, Leon waited, calculating through his next move and then watching the other Zoid close in at full speed. He was ready to turn his shield back on by the time that Bill had gotten halfway within range, but the other had practically felt out the next move, drawing the pincers back and bursting to the side at full speed a second later, one leg reversing for added effect to the spin. Leon spat a curse and made good to swing his booster around in full reverse by the time that Bill had gotten close to finishing his own spin.   
  
The Red Blade dodged the Blue Geno`s pincers by inches, and Leon hit the ground in a half-spin of his own, cutting off the booster and swinging it back into forward as he did so, one side coming to point at the Geno Breaker. By the time he pulled the trigger though, Bill had thrown up his shield.   
  
Yellow slammed into orange-pink with minimal effect, and Leon realized only now just what kind of up hill battle he was in for.   
  
  
A hollow slap of a two inch thick metal door against a concrete frame, the lock sliding shut automatically. Conrad Robertson stared vacantly at the hardened looking young man standing before him with a distateful grimace as he lowered his hand down finally, tucking it into his pocket and staring towards an exit for several seconds.   
  
"Kale said you have four days until the Geno Saurer`s evolution is complete. I don`t trust him though, it`s probably a lot shorter," Bit stated gravely, shifting his gaze to the Major after several seconds. "You should get everyone off the base as quickly as you can," he added, not waiting around for Conrad`s retort. The blonde was gone by the time that the Major could even finish processing the information, let alone how a freaking _civilian_ could have cracked Kale Obscura like an egg in under five minutes, where Conrad and at least three other interrogators had failed miserably over the course of an hour or more.   
  
Into an elevator, to the main lobby, out the front door and back on the base`s main grounds, Bit leered around uneasily, watching the build-up continue in utter futility. He had to doubt that Conrad would be able to stop such a deployment even if he wanted to, and he also had doubts about whether or not the Major had even a lick of common sense to want to be elsewhere. Military personnel weren`t exactly known for listening to Zoid Warriors after all, there was still a vague, one-sided enmity that was typically ingrained in the minds of most soldiers from day one of their careers to retirement, stemming from how the Zoid Battles were originally based around the old military tournaments held solely between Guylos and Helic soldiers to settle disputes.   
  
Needless to say, _now_ was not the time to be bitter about traditions that were becoming increasingly useless in a world where the proverbial shit was raining down in buckets and no one had an umbrella.   
  
_ "I doubt he`ll take my word,"_ Bit thought annoyedly, slowly taking the long way towards where he sensed the Liger to still be posted at. Along the way, he got the chance to see just how much of an effort the army was willing to waste trying to flex muscle that was desperately needed elsewhere. _"Don`t they know they`d be better off trying to defend against things they can actually beat?"_ He asked.   
  
_ No. Soldiers aren`t perfect unless they follow orders down to the letter, regardless of how insane those orders are,_ Zeke answered dryly.   
  
_ "You left out the whole 'dying for your country is preferable to surrendering like someone who actually has a brain outside of their crotch,'"_ Bit replied in kind, stopping to leer uneasily at the the six or seven Gojulas bristling with heavy, all-range weaponry, all of them moving slowly into one of the numerous hangars on the base.   
  
_ And you forgot that the true objective of war is not to die fighting for your country, it`s to make the other bastard die for his.   
  
"Touché..."   
  
_ A pause.   
  
"And another thing..." He began, mumbling to himself while continuing on towards the hospital.   
  
_ Hm?   
  
_ "Papayas as an _aphrodisiac_?"   
  
_ ... Not you too...   
  
_   
Thrust to the right, cut left, jump, shield on, fire blasters, fire dual shot cann-shit, out of ammo, reverse, jump again, corkscrew, dodge, doge, attack...   
  
The orders went from his brain to his fingers and feet and into the Liger`s controls as if reflexive, almost as though the Red Blade Liger _was_ his body, urging him to battle onward and try for a victory. Dodge to the left, pincers hit the ground in an explosion of a dust and dirt - how in the _Hell_ was it possible for something as big and bulky as the Geno Breaker to be _that damned agile_?!   
  
Again and again, Leon was thrown into the defensive role, dodging through attacks of every kind. A horned thrust, he dodged straight back, both pincers rushing forward to ensnare him, he jumped straight up, the Breaker bursting forward, twisting around and firing on him with it`s leg guns and he threw his shield up, it was insane. He`d known from the start that none of the other defenders would`ve stood even a blazing chance in Hell against the Geno Breaker, but this was bordering on being just as hopeless as it would`ve been even with their help.   
  
Bill issued a loud yell over the broadband, Leon dodged to the right on sheer instinct, calculating his next move in the middle of the effort and then lunging right back to his left, but the other fighter was just too much like Bit, he had come to anticipate on emotion alone, feeling out Leon`s next move so well that by the time he`d made it, the Geno Breaker was already parrying it with a claw arm, twisting in the process and crashing the full weight of it`s tail down across the head of the Blade Liger, just above and behind the cockpit.   
  
The smaller Zoid skidded back, clawing out deep, gouging trenches with it`s claws before coming to a stop, blades swinging forward and blasters opening up for the umpteenth time in under four minutes. This time, Bill was finally caught off his guard, and the Breaker rocked as plasma rained in a machine gun hail of attacks along it`s right hip, blocked an instant later by the shield of it`s right pincer.   
  
_ "Damn it... It`s like fighting an angry Bit with better reflexes and a meaner Zoid,"_ Leon reflected dryly. He`d known, at the very moment that Bit Cloud had doged one of his attacks and caused minor damage to the right blade, that he would probably never be able to truly defeat the blonde, but this pilot was fighting with almost mirror skills, more intense emotions and a far more powerful Zoid than the Liger had been during any of their battles, making the battle that much harder to win.   
  
_ "If I don`t figure out a way to get past his defenses, I`m screwed..."   
  
_ With a moment`s delay, the Geno Breaker turned to face the Blade Liger, and for a second, Leon froze. He didn`t know it, but Bill froze as well, each trying to size the other up. Bill was less calculating about it, but Leon was like a precision medical scanner in how he glared at the other Zoid, staring so hard that one could swear he was trying to look _through_ it, right into the eyes of it`s pilot.   
  
Geno crouched, Liger sank low in a ready position, each growled and a pause fell over the battlefield, the Liger stalking forward, the Breaker shifting into an uneasy series of sideways steps, as if circling an incoming predator in the sands of the desert. Slow and calculated for Leon, but Bill was judging on the flow of adrenaline alone. It didn`t matter that he was fighting on the wrong side here, it did matter that he was just fighting though. He _needed_ to vent, _needed_ to cause some carnage, take it out on someone, but he was also fighting with something in reserve.   
  
If not for that reserve, there would`ve been sweeping charged particle beam and the entire city would cease to exist. Probably the Liger as well.   
  
Emotion against logic, and the population of Romeo City was caught right in the middle of it. Leon took a deep breath, the Red Blade shifted it`s weapons for side swipes.   
  
"Here..."   
  
Seconds slipped by, Bill narrowed his eyes and listened intently to everything he could gather from the broadband, if only because a sound could prove the only tip of his foe`s next action.   
  
"We..."   
  
But the Liger`s blades had been shifted to the sides, that meant there were only a few quick options for an attack, all of which involved melee, where the Geno Breaker`s uncanny agility and superior arsenal would win though with ease...   
  
"**_GO!!!_**"   
  
Leon screamed, lunging forward. Bill met him half-way, lunging as well but kicking his jumpjets on at the last second, the Geno Breaker soaring up over the Blade Liger, and right into Leon`s next attack. The Blade Liger`s booster swiveled around almost frantically, setting precisely towards the front-left, just as Leon kicked on his rear-right thrusters, swerving around with a cloud of dust and a sudden stop as the booster finished rotating to the right and the rear thrusters stopped. Almost without aiming, Leon pulled one of the triggers and sent a volley of pulsed plasma shots from his left blaster at the Breaker`s apparent landing zone, tagging the larger Zoid across the back of it`s right leg with several grazing hits before the Breaker burst back up into the air and flipped into a corkscrew, landing and facing the Blade Liger.   
  
Gunshots rang out. Leon dodged forward, breaking into a sprint towards the city only to stop and skid sideways, turning around and leading the Breaker`s attacks towards the hill rather than facing potential allied losses. The ground exploded behind him as the Geno`s leg cannons let loose in full, both barrels on each firing off all manner of havoc in the Liger`s wake.   
  
Again, Leon swiftly turned sideways and slid to a graceful stop, blades swinging up and over the Liger`s shoulders before opening up with a volley of their own. The Breaker dodged though, leaning out of the way and stabbing a claw-arm into the dirt for balance, only to straighten up and tear out an enormous chunk of earth, relentlessly throwing it at the Liger. Plasma rang out, Leon blew the stone out of existence and realized only then that it had been a ruse, a temporary shield while the Geno closed in fully, hover-skating along at hundreds of miles per hour with it`s pincers held forward cutting thrust at the last moment and skidding along the rest of the way as the shield activated.   
  
It was last second at best, but Leon threw his own shield up and blocked, the Liger slipping back from the Geno Breaker`s immense weight as he did so, but holding firm despite the onslaught. Shields clashed violently between the two, and again, they were seperated only by the energies between them, looking almost like a clash of magics for a brief second before each shield temporarily died off from the overload, shocking the two apart for all of an instant.   
  
Leon was quicker to recover, lunging forward and almost punching the Breaker across the chin with one of the Liger`s paws, blades swinging down and into stabbing mode as he completed the stride, only to have his entire Zoid halted by an extending punch from one of the Geno`s hands, a pincer arm doing the rest of the work and grappling across the Red Blade`s body before ruthlessly slinging it through the air like nothing.   
  
It was a last second reflex that Leon pulled the booster in, and the Liger slammed down across it`s back, skidding along in the dirt and dust for several seconds before slowly rolling onto it`s stomach and standing up again uneasily. Red and Blue stood across from each other, the battle was fierce.   
  
"I won`t let you through," Leon sneered.   
  
"Doesn`t matter to me, punk," Bill replied, his voice bearing an eerie resemblance to Bit`s.   
  
  
** What hit me?   
  
**_ Judging by the damage to your old shell, I`d say something very bad. Probably a charged particle cannon, a few hundred feet of falling, several dozen pulse lasers, blaster-fire, oh - and tearing out of your own chest and ramming into some undying twit can`t be too good either.   
  
_** ... How long have I been out?   
  
**_ Hell if I know. Probably a little more than three or four hours, tops.   
  
_** Where am I?   
  
**_ In my teeth.   
  
_** No wonder. You need to learn to use a breath mint...   
  
**_ Says the she-bitch who blew apart a Judge satellite because she hasn`t brushed in two hundred years.   
  
_ The Liger Zero opened it`s mouth soundlessly, dropping a dazed, thinly built blue Organoid down to the ground with a dull thud.   
  
** Ow.   
  
**_ Pansy.   
  
_** I liked you better when you had Van`s voice.   
  
**_ And I liked **you** better with Riese`s voice, but do you see me bitching and whining because I lost the source of all of my pronographic thoughts and desires?   
  
_** ... Remind me to stab you with an especially _dull_ spoon if you ever leave that thing.   
  
** "I come at a bad time?" Bit asked, staring vacantly at the blue Organoid currently glaring up at the Liger Zero, which was staring down as if involved in a quarrel between a husband and wife.   
  
In unison, Specular and Zeke both turned towards Bit, the shorter of the two giving a huff, the taller of the two rumbling in response. Jibberish followed between them and the blonde took the hint for what it was.   
  
"Riiiight... I`ll be leaving now," he said, turning away and wandering off towards the nearest building with a mess hall.   
  
** ... Nice kid.   
  
**_ Could use a bit of work on the sanity, though.   
  
_** True.   
  
**_ Think you could take over on Vega now? I need a breather since it`s been up to __me_ to keep your shell from turning into a fine statue, your partner from becoming a corpse and you from needing to swallow some magnite... Mainly since you do enough swallowing as is.   
  
** Don`t make me come in there, you smartass.   
  
** If the Liger Zero had a tongue, it would`ve stuck it out and blown a rhaspberry at the Organoid standing before it.   
  
  
A dodge to the right, enormous claws stabbed into the side of a bar, and the dodge became a break neck sprint back towards the hill. The building`s upper level was turned into catapult-fodder a second later, fling backwards through the air like an oversized stone and breaking up in mid-air during it`s chaotic descent. Leon was only barely fast enough to avoid getting caught by the attack, and with several sturdy paces and and to the right, the Geno Breaker turned around, horn swung forward still, claws and talons alike shimmering in the mid-morning sun.   
  
The Blue Geno slowly began to step towards the hill, it was apparent that Chapman was taking his time with this one, allowing Leon to slow to a stop of his own and turn around, facing the left side of the Breaker without a word.   
  
"Funny thing about Ligers," that same, Bit-like voice echoed through Tauros` thoughts. "They can move fast and they can dodge pretty good, but is your`s fast enough to block me leveling the city with a charged particle beam?" Bill asked rashly, turning the Breaker to face the Red Blade and waiting for an answer.   
  
"I`ll nail you to a wall before you finish charging," Leon replied coldly, slowly beginning to position himself. Bill only chuckled, almost reading the other by the emotions in his voice.   
  
"Who said a full powered shot? I could do plenty of damage with one sweeping hit, even if I don`t charge up for it."   
  
"You wouldn`t..."   
  
"Right about now, I`d do _anything_ to let the world have a piece of how fucking _bad_ this past week or two`s been for me," Bill replied coldly, every ounce of that yearning for freedom that he shared with a certain blonde Royal Cup champion having been replaced by a malicious cunning that was more similar to Kale Obscura. "Now which is faster; your Blade Liger or my trigger finger?" He asked. Leon grimaced.   
  
_ "If I remember it right, Geno Breakers don`t need to be locked down to fire their main guns, but to rotate like that, he`d need about... Half a second or so,"_ he thought, swiftly calculating a way through it. _"He`s probably... A fifth of a kilometer or so from me, at most. My Blade Liger does 305 kilometers an hour, that`d take two seconds... Damn."   
  
_ "I`m _waaaaaiiiitiiiiing_," Bill said with a smirk, playing around with his opponent`s mind in a way that Kale would`ve been a bit envious of, while Bit, in his present state, would`ve been scared out of his wits at the thought of doing such a thing, if only because he was still unable to deal with what had happened the previous night.   
  
_ "Factor in the human problem... He`d need at **least** an eighth of a second to pull the trigger, plus having to divide his thoughts and move the Geno around... Half a second turns into one second, if I can get any shots in on him in the process, I could knock his aim off and..." _  
  
A laugh jolted Chapman out of his feeling of superiority.   
  
"I know the answer now," Leon announced methodically, using the oppertunity to scoot just a step closer. His next action was to swing his blades up and forward, just over the Blade Liger`s shoulders, from there, Leon took a deep breath and waited. Chapman grimaced, he knew that his opponent had somehow found a way through the attack, so it was time for something else. He smirked again though, knowing _exactly_ what to do to counter the other.   
  
"Come and give me your answer then," he ordered, already having reached a compromise. The Liger roared, the Breaker opened it`s mouth and a faint glow appeared, tail going rigid, jaws opened wide. A burst of speed, the distance was closed to nothing in _exactly_ two seconds, but the Geno had taken off in reverse half-way through it, Leon`s attack passing through the air and hitting nothing. Blindly, he charged straight under the Blue Geno Breaker, only to hear a sudden blast from the larger Zoid`s back mounted jet engines, forcing it into a flip forward, where another burst from one of the leg jets rolled it over, upright.   
  
A blaze of charged particles later, the Red Blade vanished from sight and a beam of white hot death cut across the ground like a knife through soft flesh, halting after all of a split second of continued attack, just as the engines cut out and the Blue Breaker tumbled down to the ground, landing firmly on both feet, but already in the midst of lunging forward.   
  
Leon had dodged it. Impossible as such an act was, he had dodged it in the least likely sort of way, jumping up and then corkscrewing to the left, his actions obscured for a time by the beam in the process. As a result, he was already coming in at full speed, blades swinging back down and to either side instantly. Screams were exchanged, blades clashed in an onslaught of attacks and parries, claws flashing about somewhere in between.   
  
From the onset, it was clear that the Blade Liger was just too outgunned, and step by step, the Geno Breaker battled it back, finally slipping through Leon`s blocks and point blank dodges and locking it`s claw arms around the Red Blade`s shoulders, though the distance between the Geno`s blades at their tightest was just barely enough to avoid actually damaging the smaller Zoid. Roughly, the Liger was heaved from it`s standing point, instead coming to hold awkward in front of the Geno Breaker`s face.   
  
It was then that the other Zoid`s horn sparked lightly with electricity, glowing somewhat with heat, as well. Bill took his time though, methodically lining up until the weapon was perfectly lined up with the Blade Liger`s cockpit.   
  
"How do you want to die? Slowly, or quickly?"   
  
"At the age of 95, senile, in a wheelchair, with a wife, three kids, six grandkids and a dog named Ted, how about you?" Leon replied, smugly pulling the controls into just the right configuration to activate the Liger`s shield. There was an insane crackle of energy and the Geno Breaker went flying back, it`s pincers releasing the Liger in an instant. Bill screamed out several curses indignantly, his Zoid slamming back into a roll that didn`t look at all comfortable, let alone damage-free.   
  
The Red Blade sprang back up instantly, shield dropping and the Zoid itself tilting forward and down as Leon pulled the triggers again, sending another blistering hail of plasma at the larger Zoid. The Breaker rocked hard from the assault, already making it back up to it`s feet. Blue armor glowed a hot orange in several areas, smoke filled the cockpit briefly and it`s own shield was deployed as a result, plasma ringing off like rain drops against a wind shield.   
  
"What, didn`t like my answer?" Leon quipped with an exceptionally _rare_ bit of mid-battle humor peppering his voice.   
  
"Funny man, huh?" Bill asked in reply, suddenly dropping his shield as every thruster on the Breaker kicked in at full power, sending it flying forward in a barrel roll. "**_LET`S SEE YOU LAUGH AT THIS!!!_**"   
  
A loud crash of metal against metal, the Liger shrieked in pain and the full weight of the Geno Breaker slammed into it at it`s maximum speed, sending both Zoids crashing into the ground in a sickening roll, ending with the Geno Breaker heaving itself back up to it`s feet and the Liger just laying on it side, blades somehow having survived the impact by folding up and back at the last second.   
  
True to Bill`s threat, Leon _wasn`t_ laughing.   
  
"Crap," Tauros groaned out. The Breaker rumbled threateningly, and the Blade Liger slowly got back to it`s feet, growling out in sheer defiance.   
  
  
"Impressive."   
  
"Told ya it`d fit," Leyon commented with a shrug.   
  
"Surprised you don`t have more Zoids in this thing," Steve added to the conversation as an after thought.   
  
"I _would_ but I`ve been busy elsewhere so I only managed to stockpile a few of my own creations and something I ripped off of the black market. Funny thing too, it was a one-of-five type, modular and stolen from the Helic military," Leyon answered, motioning towards the five or six shadowed figures several yards to the group`s right, though his eyes were still on the HoverCargo. It`d taken a bit of work to cram the thing in, but with some doing from the Empress Heart`s stomach-section - originally intended to hold a few dozen to a hundred Zabats - along with the opening of the tail`s top section like a sun roof, the smaller carrier had gone in without too much trouble. Left an ugly blue-and-white lump on the back of the Whale King, and contrasted with the black-and-red paintscheme that Leyon preferred, but it worked out.   
  
Steven and Sarah both nodded, and Leena - bored out of her mind, as she was - took a glance in the direction of the Zoids that Leyon had mentioned. Only one particularly stood out, the others were all a bit too shadowed to really get much of a peek at, but the one she could actually see also looked like a warped Gunsniper of some kind, the Republican logo still printed onto it`s wrists.   
  
It was almost unarmed for the most part, but there were at least three unused weapon mounts - one on the chest, the other two on either arm, and it had talons that looked like they could gut an ordinary Zoid with relative ease, as well as a gun of some sort on the nose like a Geno Saurer. Since it was hunched forward so much, Leena could also get a reasonable view of the pod on the Zoid`s back, she couldn`t tell what it was, but still.   
  
"What`s that one called?" She asked, jabbing Leyon none-too-gently in the small of the back. The older man glanced over at the Zoid and promptly facefaulted.   
  
"Uh... Well... Em..."   
  
"Well?" Leena asked, leering up at him through her glasses, the scarring on her face standing out in the light the group was standing in. Steven and Sarah both almost instantly distanced themselves for whatever reason, but Leyon was pretty much trapped at ground zero.   
  
"_Well_?"   
  
"... Originally... Uhm... ItwasnamedtheUglenabutIdecidedt-" "_**THE WHAT?! UGLENA?! WHAT THE HELL KINDA NAME IS THAT?!**_"   
  
A dull thud as Leyon Martin toppled over sideways, fidgeting in shock. Leena`s voice had been loud enough to blow the pressure out of his ears and knock him off balance completely.   
  
Steve and Sarah merely exchanged sideways glanced and spoke in relatively quiet mumblings to each other as this happened...   
  
"Reminds me of myself when I was that age," Sarah commented.   
  
"Just don`t let her hear you," Steven replied.   
  
"Why not?" Sarah asked. "If the worst she can do is scream..."   
  
It was at about that time that the sound of metal tearing from the floor echoed in the hangar, and Sarah promptly winced as said-sheet of steel was promptly wrapped around Leyon`s head to a background noise of incessant, unbearably loud bitching that was often considered Leena Tauros` trademark.   
  
"**_NOW CHANGE THE NAME!!!_**"   
  
"... Weee..."   
  
Thud. Leyon was unconscious with swirly eyes and an enormous pink bump swelling into view on his scalp. Sarah stared blankly, Steven just shrugged as if it was nothing out of the ordinary.   
  
"_That`s_ why," he answered finally.   
  
"I... See..."   
  
  
Charge, stop, reverse, dodge, claw, jump, land, dodge, bite. The cycle was endless, the banged up, dust covered Red Liger battling against the mildly damaged Blue Geno Breaker, each Zoid fighting with no restraints. In a sense, it was almost beautiful, the way they moved. One would jump, the other would spring into an attack, or one would attack and the other would twist into a parry, every strike, block, dodge and anything in between leading to the next move made, like water rushing through a pipeline at a hundred miles an hour.   
  
Of course, every pipeline had a finishing point. This one was both violent and brutal though, as Leon lunged through the air and smashed the Liger`s claws across the side of the Breaker`s head, booster swinging to the right and going to full power. Gold raked across blue, the Blade Liger corkscrewed through the air and landed on all fours, booster swinging back into it`s normal state instantly beforevanishing into neutral, blades extending to either side.   
  
A loud shriek of metal followed though, the claws of the leftt pincer arm locking shut around the Liger`s body, just behind the reach of those lethal blades. Leon screamed angrily and pulled the trigger, plasma bursts streaked out of the right blaster for all of a second, slagging shallow trails across the insider of the claw-shield before the Liger was heaved through the air, jagged death wringing through aerodynamic armor in disturbing show of strength.   
  
The Red Blade roared with pain, Leon echoed it`s cries with a scream of his own, and then the Zoid was ruthlessly driven into the ground, slammed once, then twice, and then pile driven a third time. The damage was tremendous, armor cracked, sparks flew from every part of the body, the cockpit glass had cracked in several places and more than a few panels threatened to explode in Leon`s face, and then the claws of the Breaker slipped back into their unuseful position on either pincer arm.   
  
Seconds passed by.   
  
And then the Geno Breaker howled victoriously, the jets in it`s legs igniting for a backwards jump that carried it all the way to the edge of the hill, landing with a skid to a halt. Footlocks needlessly clamped down, tail went rigid, the particle fan on it`s back suddenly glowed with a dangerous power, a power reflected as the jaw flapped open and the barrel of it`s charged particle cannon extended out.   
  
"_Shit_," Leon muttered to himself in repetition, shielding his face with one arm as the console on his left exploded in a shower of sparks, the bits of plastic-like material flying about for several seconds, thankfully not jabbing into him or anything of the like. "_Shit_, _shit_, _shit_, **_SHIT!_**"   
  
The controls wouldn`t even begin to respond. The Liger gave one last rumble and ceased movement, power failing on just about every system.   
  
It was then, that Bill Chapman spoke again.   
  
"It was a nice fight, not as good as Bit Cloud, but still nice. Nothing personal, really but... Now I`m gonna have to kill you, and the rest of this city, too."   
  
A pause. Leon looked dumbfounded at the sight of the Geno Breaker.   
  
"Have a nice day!"   
  
The Breaker primed to fire and -   
  
"**_Not happening!_**"   
  
- had it`s aim jolted horridly at the last second as several missiles nailed the ground beside it, diverting all of it`s considerable power into a wide angled, deadly beam into the skies, which would have easy annihilated at least half of the city in under a second, running wild before cutting an equally deadly swath down through the top of a nearby mountain, reducing it to charred, burning ash instantly before cutting out, a sonic boom swooping down and literally ripping the Breaker from the ground completely, lead by a silver blur of movement that was the Storm Sworder.   
  
"Get back!" Leon yelled, having determined that only his comm system was working anymore. Smoke was drifting up through cracks in the glass of the cockpit, the monitor system had gone temporarily blank before showing a slate gray view of the surrounding world, just in time to watch the Sworder come round for another pass, blades lit up in an intense, radiant orange glow.   
  
"I _hate_ people who nose into my fights," Bill muttered out, swinging the Geno Saurer`s horn back into crest-mode, instead landing with one leg moving forward of the other, the gun tilting up and letting loose. Pierce yelling out in surprise as the Storm Sworder`s central engine took in a number of rounds, forcing an explosion out through it`s exhaust port and leaving the Zoid`s other two engines to shoulder the burden, and each of those was dealt with in similar fashion.   
  
All power cut in an uncannily methodical, Kale-like fashion, the Sworder glided down to the ground and slipped roughly along the desert terrain, right into a solid kick into one shoulder, which threw it to land right next to the downed Blade Liger, blades losing their glow after a few seconds.   
  
"I tried," Pierce sighed in the same tone she`d had on the day she had lost her only _official_ Zoid match. Apparently, she wasn`t exactly afraid of death like some people were.   
  
"We both did, nothing wrong with that aside from a few million people _dying_," Leon chastised himself more than Pierce, half-ready to punch his way out of the cockpit and fight the Breaker with his _fists_ at this point. For Leon Tauros, failure in such a battle as this one, was not an option.   
  
Again, the Geno Breaker made ready to fire, preparing to re-extend it`s barrel and gut the entire city with a quarter-powered, prolonged firing shot that would be swept across everything and everyone in the area. There was hesitation though, palpable and true as Bill paused the firing, seeming to feign trouble with aiming and instead shifting from side to side, uncertain of which direction start the massacre from...   
  
And then came a triad of shots through the air, though only one impact actually appeared. The cockpit shook, Bill glared in the direction of the shot, watching the smallest monitor in the cockpit - which extended down near the main forward console - flip to a frontal wireframe view of the Geno Breaker, the left pincer shield glaring a hot red that indicated severe damage, while the rest of the Zoid ranged from green to yellow - which was none to moderate.   
  
"What the Hell?"   
  
"Who knew I`d be saving your ass one of these days?" A silky smooth, laid back voice asked with false amusement as another shot embedded itself into the left pincer shield, almost right on top of the first.   
  
"_Naomi_?!" Leon yelped in a mixture of surprise, pride and something bordering between relieved awe and wanting to jump out of the Liger and dance around like a fool. Pierce was decidedly more strategic - if only for a moment.   
  
"Keep moving, don`t let him get a lock on you!"   
  
"No point in that, he doesn`t even know where I am," the red haired sniper replied, pinging another shot into the Breaker`s left claw shield and watching it suffer from a small explosion as internal gears and the like were finally hit, the damage being only moderately severe but the effect on Chapman`s morale hitting like an atomic bomb.   
  
"Maybe he doesn`t know your exact location but he can just sweep the entire area you`re hiding behind with a charged particle beam, _get moving_!" Leon yelled, trying in futility to coax the Blade Liger to get up and fight some more. He didn`t even get a reply from it, only another panel or two dimming until the only light in the cockpit was filtered sunlight.   
  
"... _Oh_," Naomi muttered with a grimace, rotating her seat around and breaking into a quick sprint towards the enormous blip on her scanners, only to come to a halt when she spotted the huge, green Whale King lying before her.   
  
"_Damn_," she bit out, just as the entire hill side was blown to kingdom come in a sweeping, prolonged firing of the Geno Breaker`s charged particle cannon. Naomi bit her bottom lip and waited, watching as yard after square yard of terrain vanished against the onslaught, turning the Gunsniper broadside to the Whale King and biding her time, one foot on the base of the hill.   
  
Closer...   
  
_ "That`s it..."   
  
_ Closer still.   
  
_ "Come to momma..."   
  
_ Just close enough.   
  
Without a word, Naomi activated the Gunsniper`s back mounted thrusters in a roar of orange flame, sprinting up the hillside and making a high jump, right over the beam. The small crimson Zoid touched down with perfect balance on one foot, both thrusters cutting out while she spun around on the one foot`s big toe, stopping and promptly switching back to sniper mode. Sniper-locks clamped, the tail extended, but Bill was oblivious continuing the beam -   
  
_ "Hasn`t stopped me yet..."   
  
_ - until a massive shock rang through his system, forcing him to let go of the trigger while his rotation continued on, his fingers releasing the trigger just seconds before the charged particle beam could slice into the Emerald Nightmare. The Breaker spun out as a result, skidding to a halt and throwing it`s head back in an automatic response to the agony of the pilot.   
  
"Don`t _ever_ try to pull a stunt like that again," Vilhelm`s voice spoke over the private channel he had to the Breaker, though Bill was unable to hear it. He was too busy screaming as the shock finished running through his system, setting off every other pain recepting nerve in his body and leaving him to fall face forward into the forward console.   
  
He didn`t know it, but he had left the cockpit exposed, right in front of one of the best snipers on the planet. With a cold, apathetic expression to the audible screams ringing over the broadband, Naomi pulled the trigger and sent a round flying like thunder towards the Geno Breaker`s cockpit. The world held it`s breath and then everything stopped.   
  
A flash of blue and red, blinding, a black glow appearing on the Geno Breaker, which promptly vanished in a streak of light. The bullet that could have ended Bill Chapman`s life streaked on with a sonic crack, passing through the main street of Romeo City and continuing on, so perfectly aimed that it had missed _everything_ behind where her intended target had been.   
  
**_ If you`ll excuse us, we need some CRASH THERAPY!!!   
  
_** The Breaker briefly reappeared, dropping with an uneasy stagger sideways to it`s feet as a blue-red-and-black Organoid appeared, flying around it like an irate hornet before driving into the Zoid`s throat and vanishing again, the Breaker again becoming nothing but a streak of mixed red and blue, outlining a core of black light.   
  
**_ HOPE YA DON`T MIND!   
  
_** And then it was gone.   
  
  
"_Damn_," Vilhelm bit out to himself, quickly flipping a switch on the waist-high table that sat beside him, standing in his private quarters for the time being, watching the battle through a wall-sized observation window.   
  
"Your orders?" The ship`s formal captain asked automatically.   
  
"Get us the Hell out of here, _now_!"   
  
"Yes sir!"   
  
The Emerald Nightmare`s engines flared to life, and an armored plate extended down over the window, obscuring it from view completely while Vilhelm bit his cheek. He would need a more dependable lackey if Chapman was going to be as errant as he was, even accounting for Borealis` in-and-out raid. He`d find a better servant soon, but for now, there was a more pressing matter...   
  
"Spectacle."   
  
A green glow lit the floor behind him, and from it jumped the familiar, emerald toned Organoid, optics dulled a bit in concentration.   
  
_ Bring back the wayward Bill, I`m assuming?   
  
_ "Yes. If you can, eliminate his former Organoid while you`re at it."   
  
_ With pleasure.   
  
_ There was another green glow and Spectacle was gone, phasing through the floors and eventually passing his way into a temporary freefall out of the belly of the Whale King, briefly visible to those gathered on the battlefield before turning into a green comet and vanishing in the same direction as Borealis.   
  
Vilhelm merely snorted in silence, thoughtfully regarding how mixed the night`s events had been, and at the same time, giving immense consideration to how the day`s own events would carry on as a result. The world wasn`t burning yet, but it would be soon. All the pieces were already falling into place, it was just a matter of matching them up and throwing away anything that didn`t fit.   
  
A cold smile as the room`s mixed lighting kicked in automatically, shadowing his face maliciously, but not hiding the villainy that burned in those evil green eyes.   
  


_ End Chapter Seven  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** *Phew.* Looks like the opening shots have been fired and proven to be indecisive for any side... Maybe next chapter, I`ll **finally** be able to slow things down a bit... *Greh.* x_X All this fighting is startin` to get to even **ME**...  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** I`ll give you a hint... If you think what Raven did with the original Geno Breaker was a slaughter when he first got a hold of it, you`re going to probably shit yourself. Nuff said.  
  
**Illidan:** Whether or not Bit goes bad or good is entirely up to him at this point. There`s only so long someone is writing a story before the characters start making their own choices, after all.  
  
**DJ Wolfwood:** I don`t usually read the Sailor Moon fics(I`ve read all of... *Counts.* **TWO!** And I only actually understood one of them :P), but I`ll give it a read sometime. Also glad you don`t mind how I`ve used Jesse.  
  
**Thunderstorm:** I doubt the Liger Zero`ll ever get a CPC on it, Ligers just don`t seem to be Zoids that pack weapons like that :P Oh, and next time ya review: Hit the 'submit' button once, please. Just a piece of advice >_>;  
  
Well, expect the next chapter to be less devoted to wanton violence(for once!) and more towards furthering the plot, that`s about all this ol` Sh33p is sayin` for now :P Hope everyone enjoyed the Leon/Bill/Pierce/Naomi battle/interaction/ass-saving/etc, by the way, and also hope everyone liked Zeke and Specular`s banter... It`s almost like writing Piccolo and Zangya again! >_>;;  
  
As always, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	8. The Quiet of the Reload

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick a song... _Any_ song...  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
The Quiet of the Reload   
  
  
  


Fear was palpable as the containment unit slid to a slow halt, the sound of desert sands shifting beneath not-too-distant wheels echoing into the ears of a former mercenary and two teens, all three of them caught in a crazy game that they could all only scarcely comprehend the scale of, though no one with sanity could really understand it all. This didn`t count the fact that both teens were each only barely sane anymore didn`t count very much, it took a very special type of insanity - evil - to understand what was truly happening.   
  
For good or bad, none of the three had the slightest ounce of that type.   
  
Brad was silent and unflenching as his restraints were undone down to a pair of simple handcuffs, which were re-cuffed to his own belt a second or so later. Jamie followed suit in similar fashion, though the precaution of the cuff-to-the-belt wasn`t taken, and Leyla was already incapacitated enough as it was. Though the lone wolf of the trio was mostly quiet aside from the occasional disgruntled sound or a witty comment on the side, the other two were each bordering on being terrified. Leyla less so than Jamie, but still.   
  
Harshly and without a single word of comfort, damnation or mocking, the three were lead from the holding unit, out the back and into the light of day, which was soon turned into the shadow of a Hammer Kaiser, a rarer, far larger version of the Hammerhead I and II, each of which only measured in at a tenth of the size at best for the I, three tenths at the maximum for the II. It was almost the size of an upper-middle-sized Whale King, and for it`s size, equally armed. Hammer Kaisers were made for stand-off assaults or bombardment using conventional, cruise and ballistic missiles, they weren`t quite as armored as their cousins, but they were more agile and could easily make it into space with little trouble, while only the smallest Whale Kings could do such a thing.   
  
"Money to burn, I`m guessing?" Brad asked one of their captors with an off beat sarcasm that underlined the mutually held 'we`re screwed' attitude of the three. He got no answer other than a solid smack across the face, and though a small trickle of blood ran down from one nostril afterward. "You hit like a girl," he muttered under his breath at the would-be disciplinary, who only growled annoyedly and made ready to attack again, held back by one of the others.   
  
Minutes passed, the three were lead up a ramp that was actually the Kaiser`s normally concealed lower jaw, easily large enough to lead to a hangar that maintained room for up to fifty normal Zoids, or one enormous Zoid. Minutes more passed as their Zoids were loaded in, along with the troops, and a few minutes more dragged by with no conversation from the three, though Leyla and Jamie were both becoming increasingly disoriented and even a little panicked by their surroundings.   
  
After a time though, each was uncuffed and flung into a single cell for the three of them, with little care for Brad or Jamie but a suspicious amount for their compatriot, who was only kicked in by the seat of her pants rather than roughly thrown in like the other two.   
  
A loud crash of metal and the door was shut, automatically locking.   
  
"Feel free to take `er strait jacket off, won`t make a bit of difference where you`re goin`," one of the guards mocked before slapping the door shut and leaving the three in dulled shadow, only barely able to see more than a few feet in front of them.   
  
"Well, all things considered, that wasn`t too bad," Brad commented, rubbing his sore wrists while Jamie sought to release the strait jacket`s grip on his girlfriend. Leyla merely stared at the former mercenary in annoyance before speaking up.   
  
"What the Hell is wrong with you? We`re being taken to god-knows-where and your only reaction is to pop off _jokes_?" She asked, breaking her normally cheerful, calm and polite demeanor in the heat of the moment. Jamie said nothing, but it was obvious that he agreed wholeheartedly. Brad gave a shrug in the darkness.   
  
"Panic gets us nowhere, it also wrecks our focus. We have to remain calm and work together as a team to get outta here, if that`s even possible."   
  
"And where does sarcasm get us?" Jamie asked with a tone that matched Leyla`s own, needlessly helping the girl up.   
  
"Sarcasm is just my way of staying calm. You two could make out, dance around to hummed-out pop music, sing sports anthems, play rock-paper-scissors, cheesily declare your love for each other or _whatever_ for all I care, just _don`t_ panic and lose focus on our goal."   
  
Neither bothered arguing the point, but neither were about to let go of each other either for that matter. Stoically, Brad crossed his arms over his chest, sat down on one of the four or five uncomfortable, wall-hung beds and crossed his legs, leaning back against the wall itself and closing his eyes a second later. As Leyla and Jamie fumbled their way over to another of the three chained/hinged beds, an empty hum sounded off in the darkness.   
  
It was the tune of an old roady`s theme song, first hummed out some two-hundred-and-fifty-years earlier by a woman history would record as Moonbay, everything from a `Staver to a six time racing champion at the Guylos Grand Prix to a founder of one of the more successful soft drink companies around.   
  
  
Roughly ten hours ago, life had been perfect. Just about everything was going well - her boyfriend was doing fine despite being covered in minor cuts and bruises, his best friend was doing reasonably well, her own friends were all doing just fine, her employer and surrogate uncle was doing good, her education was being provided for through both her own hard work and her boyfriend`s, she was making good grades and had a promising future career in virtually any generalized medical field she felt like going into.   
  
Right about now, to say that Abigail Summers felt like crap would`ve been a particularly _light_ way of putting things. A childbirth, three improvised surgeries, four emergency blood transfusions and an amputation, as well as two fatalities had left her completely drained of just about everything. She`d been running on all cylinders with jet lag since getting off the Hammerhead she and Mark had come home in. The tan skin of her arms was still visibly wet from having just washed them down after removing surgical gloves, and all things considered, she was doing a fairly good job for someone who was getting only a crash course as more than a student.   
  
"I need a nap," the short young woman muttered to herself, plopping down with a soft thud on the bench outside of any one of the five choked hospitals in Farentown. With close to two thousand fatalities at this point, there were also well over six times as many surviving casualties of the ambush that had taken place the previous evening. Smoke _still_ billowed up from the ruined ashes of several of the Zoid hangars that had been blown to smithereens, and in a city where there were at least sixteen local multi-Zoid hangars and shops with half of them exploding, the damage had been immense.   
  
Several of the local high rise buildings still bore scars, blown out glass and the like, it was really quite insane, not to mention difficult to really wrap one`s brain around.   
  
"You ain`t the only one," a ragged voice replied as a second thud - this one more dull than truly soft - sounded, a taller, relatively thinner form landing next to her. Abbie glanced sideways, watching as Mark sat next to her with an opened can of Jolt Cola and a bag of potato chips, while Kyle mugged a canned drink machine that had swallowed a quarter.   
  
"Long night, honey?" She asked sweetly, almost murderously eying his drink like a dying desert animal. Mark scouted the look ahead of time, offering a sip without being needed to hear a request. The two looked like the twilight of a morning compared to the twilight of the afternoon. Abbie was wearing a pair of snug fitting jeans and a short sleeved, pink t-shirt, along with sneakers and nothing else. Mark was wearing a pair of black cargo pants and a matching t-shirt, his old baseball-styled cap worn raggedly atop his head, a bit of five-o-clock shadow on his chin. Both looked a bit paler than usual from exhaustion, each mirrored the other with dry eyes of a different color to each other - Mark`s being a dark blue, Abbie`s more of a vivid green - and both looked like they were ready to fall asleep on each other.   
  
"You could use a bandage change," Abbie observed after several seconds, downing at least half of Mark`s drink and suddenly twitching slightly as the caffine literally jolted into her system.   
  
"Bandages smandages-" "_**GIMME MY GOD DAMN DRINK YOU PIECE O` CRAP!**_" "- save `em for who needs `em."   
  
A loud crash and the sound of breaking plastic to the background of an irate bishounen frothing out the mouth like an absolute psychopath.   
  
"I think Kyle`s gone insane, dear," Abbie casually pointed out. Mark shrugged vacantly.   
  
"Should`ve seen him earlier when we actually saw some action..."   
  
"Hmm?"   
  
"Well..."   
  
** [**_"Someone draw their fire!" Harabec ordered, taking charge of the situation the moment he arrived. Shots rang out briefly as the black-and-gold Rev Raptor sprang it`s scythes into attack mode and dodged through fire from a Helcat, gutting the thing in the small of the back with ease before moving on into an acrobatic jump.   
  
"Draw their fire?" Mark asked, and suddenly everything stopped for a moment.   
  
Kyle had taken things so literally that the Ivory Blade Liger was shaking it`s rear end around at the enemy Zoids like a cheap stripper trying for a five dollar bill on the graveyard shift.   
  
"**YOU BITCHES WANT SOME O` THIS?!**"_**]**   
  
Mark yanked the bag open and swiped a handful of chips, a subtle tick visible at the edge of one eye. "I don`t think I`ll ever look at Blade Ligers the same again..."   
  
"... That`s..."   
  
"Yeah."   
  
A pause.   
  
"So, how was your night, hon?"   
  
"Bloody, filled with screaming, improvisional medical care at it`s best and more physical and mental trauma than you can imagine," Abbie explained with an unusually blunt way about her. She then leered uneasily at him with a dimmed expression. "Heard from Mom, Pierce or your parents yet?"   
  
"Nope," Mark said like a ton of bricks. The global communications network had been among the casualties of the night`s activities: There had been so many calls, e-mails, log-ons, mixed news broadcasts and long range transmissions on similar frequencies that just about everything wasn`t functioning right. The internet had briefly crashed, phonelines had overloaded and crossed calls from having so many signals at once, the news was almost completely unreliable and long range transmissions had flooded every known frequency but military channels.   
  
About the only communications technologies actually working anymore belonged to the military, in fact. Everything else was still in Hell and it probably would be for a while longer. Abbie sighed, finding something else to focus on since she didn`t exactly _like_ talking about the end of life as pretty much everyone had known it.   
  
In this case, that subject was Mark`s health.   
  
"Are you sure we shouldn`t change those?"   
  
"Save the damn medical supplies for people who need `em..."   
  
"Don`t try to be a freakin` self-sacrificial twit, _newb_," Kyle interrupted, lightly whacking Mark across the back of the head.   
  
"Go screw another drink machine, _chinmo_," Mark replied, harshly backhanding the other in the stomach.   
  
"I`d rather _not_," Kyle retorted, this time jamming his fist down into Mark`s scalp and tilting that black cap all out of place as a result.   
  
"I _insist_," Mark shot back, his own fist shooting up into the bottom of Kyle`s jaw, behind that oh-so-lethal chin and knocking the silver haired man`s head back. They stood like there for several seconds, and Abbie just stared at them sourly.   
  
"You both have _way_ too much time on your hands," she finally said with a sigh, just swallowing what was left of Mark`s former drink as if it were a shot of vodka.   
  
  
A loud explosion of dust and dirt as the Geno Breaker materialized, off balance and obviously disoriented, it`s pilot conveniently missing from the cockpit as it fell over. Bill let out a loud yell of indignance and landed harshly after a four foot drop, skidding along for a few feet before stopping. There was a shock of color in front of him, and then Borealis finished materializing, eerily seeming to crack it`s neck from side to side.   
  
"Come to finish me off?" Bill asked in a tone bordering on irate but held in check by that same murderous calm.   
  
**_ Finish ya off? Now WHY would I do THAT?!_** Borealis replied, twitching several times as it`s optics briefly dimmed and brightened repeatedly for no apparent reason. _**Especially here, of ALL PLACES that I could choose to kill ya, SONNY!**_   
  
A pause.   
  
"What the Hell happened to your voice?" Bill asked, sitting up and casting a glance at the surroundings. The Breaker was lying on it`s stomach, the surrounding area was one that Bill hadn`t seen in years.   
  
**_ Nothin` ya need to know `bout. LIKE THE SPOT I PICKED?!   
  
_** Irony. It was the same place they`d first met some ten years earlier when a then-younger Bill Chapman had literally stumbled into a wandering, twisted looking creature he later knew as Borealis. A wide road running through the forest near his home town of Wind City, though this was more or less a road nobody ever used anymore. Highways and the like tended to supercede back roads for just about everyone but bandits, gangs and smugglers, and they usually picked less obvious routes.   
  
Silence.   
  
Borealis stood anxiously, randomly glancing from side to side with jerky movements, all the while bouncing up and down like a boxer in the ring. The black haired young man standing before him merely growled under his breath and stood up, dusting himself off without a word and looking around.   
  
"Yanno..."   
  
**_ No, as a matter of FACT, Idon`tknowagoddamnthinganymore, SORRY?!   
  
_** "You probably just got me killed," Bill said with a sneer, the skin around the choker he wore still looking a bit singed from the jolt that had just pulsed through his system mere seconds earlier. Borealis seemed to literally blink, all movement ceasing instantly.   
  
"But I guess I can make it up by ripping your guts out, now can`t I?" He asked angrily, a maddened smile appearing across his face. The Organoid took a step back. "Now c`mere, ol` _buddy_, ol` _pal_, let`s see how _you_ like it when _I_ try to kill _you_," Bill stated, suddenly breaking into a run. Borealis merely jumped up, dodging over him and landing behind, perfectly balanced.   
  
**_ Gee, ol` Billy-boy, don`t take getting flung out of a Whale King in the heat OF THE MOMENT too lightly, do ya?   
  
_** Bill stopped almost on a dime, twisting around on one foot and making another charge.   
  
"You`re right," he admitted halfway. "**_I DON`T!_**"   
  
**_ Well it ain`t MY FAULT I lost my mind and haven`t FOUND IT YET!   
  
_** A solid ***THWACK*** and Bill twisted through the air like a rifle round, landing in a skid on his back some thirteen feet from where the Organoid had firmly belted him across the face. Despite being the youngest of the current generation, Borealis was no pushover.   
  
**_ Now how about we calm down and sing the happy-HAPPY song?   
  
_** Slowly, disoriented and now bruised across one cheek, the black haired youth sat up, wiping dirt from his mouth with a lethally determined glare. "I`d rather _not_," he muttered out, standing up straight and throwing his fists up in a boxer`s stance, almost mimicking the style of movement that Bit Cloud often used when he was shadow boxing to blow off steam.   
  
**_ Then let`s put on ou` classics and we`ll `ave a li`l dance, shall we?   
  
_** "_Sure_."   
  
The steady, rhythmic bouncing motion of his near hovering steps was a small distraction, but Borealis was still easily able to tilt out of the way of a three punch assault, fists literally blurring past his head as the Organoid stood there, looking quite oblivious at the moment.   
  
"**_FIGHT DAMN YOU!_**"   
  
**_ Ehhhh...   
  
_** A punch into the bottom of the jaw and the seven foot tall Organoid tilted back at an unnatural angle, standing still only due to the balance of it`s tail. Both eyes dimmed briefly and then lit back up as was the norm before -   
  
**_ Hell. WHY NOT?!   
  
_** - another solid ***THUD*** issued in the road, that Bill slamming down into the ground on his face from a downward headbutt.   
  
**_ Jesus fucking Christ, man! What the hell is your HEAD made OF?!   
  
_** Effortlessly as it was, Bill was back on his feet and a bit dazed with ease, now bruised on the forehead as well. Again he attacked - fists blurring almost entirely out of view. Two punches at first, then three, four, five, six and a seventh followed suit, every one of them missing their target before Borealis effortlessly jumped back, balanced on his tail and sprang forward, glowing briefly with a trailing aura of red, blue and black before delivering an uncannily martial arts styled kick across the other`s face.   
  
Bill streaked through the air and landed with yet another loud thud on the ground, skidding and rolling along awkwardly to the head of the downed Geno Breaker, while his former best friend landed with a near karate-like pose, short arms sticking out in a pathetic attempt for a fighting stance, one leg curled in and his tail arcing low to the ground for balance.   
  
**_ Kirk-Fu, BIATCH! Ph33r t3h 3V1L L33TN355!!!   
  
_** Slowly this time, Bill sat up again, expression borderlining on murderously psychotic as he wiped his jaw once more. "What the _fuck_ happened to you?" He asked in disbelief.   
  
**_ ... Yanno, for YOU of ALL PEOPLE ON THIS admittedly small and utterly pathetic multi-climatic dustball of a PLANET TO BE ASKING ME!!! Is more than a smegging smidge smagoogling IRONIC! Mister I`m-gonna-KILL-YER-AYUSS!   
  
_** Again, the Organoid hopped around, still on one foot. The insanity would`ve continued, if not for the green streak that crackled in overhead, slamming into Borealis like a freight train and completely obscuring him in a body-sized crater.   
  
_ We`ll be leaving right about now.   
  
_ Spectacle appeared almost effortlessly in his place, but only for a second, streaking again and phasing into view on top of the Geno Breaker, then swooping down, grabbing Bill and blazing back into the skies, taking both the Zoid and it`s pilot with him.   
  
In the crater however, Borealis was left to lie there. Alone. Again.   
  
**_ ...   
  
_** A pause. Slowly, he rose back up, covered in dirt and dust, optics blazing brightly in the morning light, but he didn`t pursue them. Instead, he did something that was now becoming quite typical given that his sanity was still on temporary hiatus:   
  
**_ HAH! I`M STILL ALIVE, YOU FUCKERS!!!   
  
_**   
"Report," a voice echoing calm villainy echoed in the purposefully ill-lit room that served as Vilhelm Rommel`s private office. It was currently occupied by only two people, namely the overlord of the entire organization himself, and a seemingly unimportant lackey who was actually the ship`s third-in-command, after it`s captain and Rommel himself.   
  
"Last night`s attacks lead to mixed results, sir. Fifteen of the neutral zone-cities are gone, leaving only Farentown, Romeo City, ZBC headquarters and the Guardian Force`s Command Ultrausaurus fully intact or close to it. Outside of that, we`ve successfully caught the governments of the Helic and Guylos nations both off guard, their forces are in disarray and around 70% of the raids we made on their civilian populations broke through due to military incompetence."   
  
"And what of the more specific targets? I take it those are the ones that were the most mixed?" Vilhelm asked sourly, leaning rather heavily on one elbow, shifting slightly in the throne-like chair behind his desk.   
  
"... Yes, sir. Fleiheit and another woman - we _believe_ it was Riese - killed themselves before we could take them alive. Several dozen of our soldiers were injured and the Zoids involved in destroying the Wind Colony were so haywire that we had to wipe their cores and data banks completely clear."   
  
A grimace of annoyance. He`d been relying _heavily_ on taking Fiona Alysse Linette-Fleiheit alive, and possibly taking the other Zoidian as well. Unless he could find a viable substitute...   
  
"Continue," he ordered through grit teeth. "The bad first."   
  
"Bit Cloud and the Liger Zero also escaped the trap we`d set for him. The entire ambush force was massacred in under three hours, what little we could gather from black boxes show that everything went right down hill the moment Fleiheit took her own life. We were also unable to locate Stoller and his people, _or_ Vega Obscura and the Berserk Fury. We _did_ recieve confirmation from an agent, that Obscura was spotted near Garnhelm Base, waging battle with his older brother. We`re unsure of the exact outcome, _but_ we`re trying to get confirmation of information that Cloud, both Obscuras, the Liger, the Fury and an unknown Zoid in mid-evolution are at the same base."   
  
"... Hnnn..."   
  
"New Helic City and Guygalos are both only slightly damaged, Romeo and Farentown are both becoming patchwork fortresses, our second attacks on all of them failed to varying degrees..."   
  
"What of the Zoid warriors?"   
  
"Ah... Well, pretty much all of the teams lower than A have been disabled, tied up in defense of a town or city, are missing or dead."   
  
"And those in A and S?"   
  
"Most of the Class A teams have gathered around Romeo, Farentown and some of the border cities, while a few Class S teams have been spotted at Firishton, on the southern coast of the neutral zone. Outside of that, most, if not all, are missing in action," the lieutenant finished, though he spoke again before Rommel could try and say something. If not for the fact that it was particularly _good_ news, he probably would have killed the sorry bastard.   
  
"The captain of the Fatalistic Renegade successfully captured three prisoners earlier this morning," the lieutenant reported with a nod. "Your point being?" Vilhelm asked with palpable annoyance.   
  
"Two are members of the Class S Blitz Team, the other is Leyla Tsun, the woman that Bill Chapman`s Organoid was drawn too."   
  
The mood in the entire room changed. "Very good," Rommel said to himself, thoughtfully rubbing his chin. "What`s the name of the Renegade`s captain?"   
  
"Susan Turpscavey, I believe. One of the most well-rounded captains we have, as a matter of fact."   
  
Vilhelm smiled lightly. "Good. Tell her to rendevous with us at Tollway Base as soon as possible."   
  
"Yes, sir," the lieutenant said, suddenly wanting to _leave_ very badly. The very atmosphere in the room had turned so malignant that it almost held a barely perceptable strain just to try and breathe. Finally though, after a number of lengthy seconds, Vilhelm spoke up again, his voice laced with the same tone it often held when he had some sort of plan waiting in the wings.   
  
"Give me status reports of the Black Ultra and Hellwalker projects as soon as we land," he ordered finally. The other gave a brisk nod and waited. "You can leave now," Vilhelm finally said, waiting until he could see the beeds of sweat starting to drip down the other man`s long face. He recieved a stern salute from the lower ranking officer, who then speed walked out of the room, leaving Rommel alone to brood and scheme as he always did.   
  
  
Unseen by the eyes of men, women, Zoids or Organoids, standing alone upon the top of one of the three flat-topped mountains that rose in the background of the sprawling Garnhelm Base, two sets of eyes wandered from sight to sight, and two sets of minds remained joined in a debate over the next course of action. It was quiet, this far out, unnervingly so for most people. Birds didn`t fly here, no one was moving off base and the scanners hadn`t picked them up for a multitude of reasons.   
  
The most evident of those reasons was the enormous creature that stood alone atop the hill, it`s fiercely glowing red optics settling indecisively on a speck of movement within the base. The distance between those eyes and the speck of movement - which was named Bit Cloud - was at least six miles, yet Roc could see as if he were standing mere feet from the object of his interest. It was his power that was throwing off the base`s scanners, just a simple, limited impulse of magnetics and the like everytime someone set an eye or an ear in their direction.   
  
The other reason, less apparent since she was both a good dozen times smaller at _least_ than her enormous comrade, was Madison Rose. With little, if _any_ effort, she was telepathically obscuring every peek anyone took at Roc and herself. Her own eyes, pink and seeming to lack any definition between iris and pupil, were settled elsewhere from those of Roc`s, namely the dull glow miles upon miles away, where a darkly purple diamond sat undisturbed.   
  
Their own silence was disturbed however, for they, like anyone who was naturally sensitive to Zoids, could hear the dull, repetitive drumbeat of what sounded like a colossal heart. Bump. Bump. Bump. Every two seconds, it was as flawless as clockwork, perfectly timed in every way.   
  
"I doubt the forces they`ve gathered here stand a chance," she finally stated, not feeling a bit of remorse but at the same time, not feeling any satisfaction either.   
  
** They do not.   
  
** "Then why are we going to let them die?"   
  
** We are not letting them die. We are not helping them die, either. We are merely playing our part in this game**, Roc replied calmly, his voice a soothing, parental tone, though with the way Madison spoke, it was hardly needed.   
  
"How is this playing our part? Aren`t we Guardians?"   
  
** Indeed, we are. But as we have our roles, so do they. So do Three, Four and Five. Jhadakalori-... Zeke, and Specular, even Shadow. We must let this play out as it shall, for it will determine how we involve ourselves.   
  
** "Initially," Madison reminded.   
  
** Initially, yes. Our first actions. To be the mentors of saviors or the saviors ourselves.   
  
** "I see," she said in understanding. Despite not seeming too bright, the tall, masculine looking woman was more intelligent than many people would ever determine from a first glance. "I still don`t see the purpose of letting so many die though, not when they`re needed," she said, still not out of sympathy but more out of apathetic logic.   
  
** They need not become dependent upon us. Guardians, we may be, but a crutch we are not.   
  
** Madison gave only a low, thoughtful sound in reply, turning her attention back to the window of the base`s hospital, where a lone, blue shape had snaked it`s way inside.   
  
  
In the middle of the desert terrain just outside of Romeo City, Leon Tauros stood with an errant expression before the downed hulk of his Blade Liger, one hand clasped behind his head, one tucked into the pocket of his long-vest. He had no idea what he should have been feeling as he regarded the formerly glorious Zoid lying in a heap before him, it seemed as though he _should_ have felt the same sense of profound shame that he`d once worn like a badge of honor, but that didn`t seem to fit anymore. Leon Tauros was used to turning his emotions off, he fought without them and in most cases, he felt that they were more a liability to him than an asset.   
  
In this case, logic was failing him and his emotions had gone haywire. He should have felt saddened but instead he felt a mixture of restrained pride, something of a hollow sting in his chest and the urge to smile like a mad man tugging at the edge of his lips.   
  
"Even when you`re half-_dead_, you`re still just as glorious as ever, eh?" He asked the Zoid, finally recieving a low rumble in response. It dared not move, the stabilizers wouldn`t even function, but it was still alive. Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, Leon felt relief that he wouldn`t have to be looking for another Zoid. He had made a vow that he`d die before losing this one, he intended to keep it even if it was a self-fullfilling prophecy.   
  
Nearby stood a less than whistful Pierce Summers, also regarding her downed heap of a Zoid. Smoke still trailed up from the engines, the silver paintscheme had been almost as ruined by the sand, the blades remained in their attack position but the glow had long faded out to reveal only onyx-tinted metal. She was incredibly lucky to even be alive, and she knew it. Less than stoic, and far less than relieved or whistful about her current situation though, about the only thing showing on her features was a look of concern mixed with annoyance, flight helmet held lazily in one hand at her side.   
  
"Could`a gone worse, I suppose," she finally admitted with a small shrug, just as several thuds came to a stop behind her, followed by the sound of swishing glass and a final thump of feet landing on the hard packed dirt.   
  
"Well, aren`t you two just the happily miserable heroes of the day?" Noami`s voice mocked. "Keep up the pity partying and you`d make a fine couple for the angsty romance writers," she added as a joking afterthought, earning an ireful glare from the green haired woman standing across from her, though Leon seemed to not register a single word. He was still caught up in staring at the Blade Liger.   
  
"Yo, Leon!" Naomi shouted out at his lack of response, waltzing on up to her partner-in-crime with her hands tucked into the pockets of her long coat. He was still quiet for several seconds more before letting out a lengthy sigh that sounded somewhere between defeat and absolute victory, lowering his free hand down into his other pocket and then leering down at the ground. When the sniper stopped walking and stood next to him, she paused as well, regarding the damage with a whistle of impression before glancing sideways at him.   
  
She would`ve made a witty comment because she was expecting to see him blubbering like a baby, or at the least shedding a tear or two for a defeat _that_ brutal, but instead?   
  
He was smirking and his eyes were closed in a relaxed sort of way.   
  
"We got our asses his kicked," he said, more in relief than in the expected 'why me?!' manner she had been prepared for. Caught off guard by this, Naomi quirked a thin, darkly crimson brow up, dark violet eyes shifting back towards the Zoid in front of them. "Could`ve been worse," she echoed Pierce`s sentiments, though with a bit more sophistication. "You`re right, it could`ve. But it didn`t," Leon replied, looking back up from the ground.   
  
"He could`ve finished every last one of us off with the charged particle cannon. Even you."   
  
"Why didn`t he then?" Naomi asked pointedly in mild disbelief. Given how insane the night and the accompanying morning had been, her doubt was minimal at best, as was her surprise.   
  
"He didn`t want to fight," Pierce cut in, following Leon`s train of thought down to the letter. Tauros gave a nod, speaking again a second later.   
  
"Don`t you remember how his shot cut out involuntarily right before it could his the Whale King? Or how the Geno Breaker threw it`s head back in pain?"   
  
"Zoids don`t feel the pain of their pilots, Leon," Naomi skeptically said, though she put little effort into backing her words up.   
  
"Bit felt the Liger Zero`s pain, the guy fought almost exactly like he would in that kind of Zoid, even sounded just like him," Leon shot back. "So if Bit could feel the Liger Zero`s pain then-"   
  
"Then you`re right," Naomi conceded without bothering to fight it. "It`s not too much of a stretch," she added as an afterthought before switching subjects. "I managed to call in some help for you two, they`re bringing in some of the guys from the other lines to fill the gap, and there should be a Gustav here in a few minutes," she explained, turning around.   
  
"What about you?" Leon asked. "Where`s your Gustav at?"   
  
"I left it parked about ten miles southeast, with any luck it wasn`t hit by that psycho trying to fry me," she said, slowly walking towards the Gunsniper. "Which is exactly where I`m headed now."   
  
"You gonna be coming back afterward?" Leon asked, watching her go.   
  
"Well _duh_, Mister 'You`re-no-better-than-the-cockroaches,' I`d _think_ you would know me better by now," she shot back, though she didn`t stop and turn around to face him while doing it. Better to not let him see her trying to stifle the giggle at what she correctly thought would be his utterly dumbfounded expression, she reasoned.   
  
"Right..." Leon finally replied, giving a slow shake of the head and glancing over at Pierce. "What about you?"   
  
The formerly quiet ex-Backdraftee just shrugged as well. "I been here this long, haven`t I?" She asked with a mock roll of the eyes.   
  
"I didn`t mean that, I meant are you going to go back to the city on foot or wait here?"   
  
"Probably going back to the city, why?"   
  
"Misery loves company," Leon quipped, knowing that Naomi would hear him since she hadn`t finished climbing into her Gunsniper yet. At that, he walked around the downed Blade Liger, thoughtfully swiping a hand over the tip of it`s snote and then speaking in a hushed tone.   
  
"Rest up, Liger, you`ll be better when you wake up."   
  
And with that, he walked off towards the city, soon joined by Pierce as she thoughtlessly lobbed her helmet over her shoulder and into the busted open cockpit of the Storm Sworder, speeding up briefly to catch up with Tauros in the process.   
  
_ "Angsty romance novel fodder, all the way,"_ Naomi smirked, reaching up and pulling the cockpit shut without another word.   
  
  
The lighting was dull. Not necessarily dark, but it could have been done _far_ better. The bed had no mattress, the chains that held it up and the hinges that kept it close to the wall restricted comfortable movement severely. He was hungry, but it wasn`t yet time to eat. The sounds of movement could be heard, if he`d placed an ear to the wall. The entire room shook imperceptably from the ruckus of movement taking place all over Garnhelm base, and yet it barely seemed like he noticed them.   
  
The only sound he seemed to register, the only vibration that caught his bored attentions came from within. His own mind was picking them up and transmitting them in the only way his brain could consciously register, the sound of a heartbeat. Slow, steady, unwavering and precise. Every two seconds, he heard it. Every two seconds, the blackness behind the closed lids of his eyes was briefly interrupted by a burst of white, outlined with an especially thin, dark purple. It would fade over the course of the next two seconds and then burst into his opaque vision again, growing a little bigger and a little brighter by the hour.   
  
He sat alone in the cell, ignorant of his surroundings because he had already figured them out perfectly. His head was balanced on one cheek, in one hand, the ungloved fingers strumming a slow rhythm on his relatively pale flesh, his other hand sagging off of one knee. Disinterest made him look arrogant in his current settings.   
  
Tomorrow afternoon, he`d pinpointed with some effort. Shadow could have gone faster, of course, but the Organoid seemed to have an utterly sadistic sense of irony. Tomorrow afternoon was the 231st anniversary of the day that Shadow had first evolved the original Geno Breaker from Raven`s reborn Geno Saurer. The Organoid had timed it so perfectly, that it would be completed at the exact same time as Geno Breaker had been, under nearly matching conditions.   
  
Activity broke, his disinterest briefly seemed to fade and his eyes opened, viciously pleased with himself. Irises of a particularly dark looking purple, almost black unless viewed in the proper lighting, seemed to glow with murderous intent as a smile slowly etched it`s way onto Kale Obscura`s face.   
  
Tomorrow afternoon was going to be a bloodbath.   
  


_ End Chapter Eight_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Ahhhh... Calm, peace... Coming death and destruction...  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** You`re right about the Diamond Fox, but that`s about it. I`m not sure **what** Leena`s next Zoid might be, it could be the Uglena but I have another candidate in mind that rather... Ties into a potential prequel I may write. The other Zoids are as yet, undetermined, though I`d bet one or two belong to the resident mad scientists since they were never mentioned after the two fought. Not sure though.  
  
**Illidan:** Chapman isn`t exactly insane but he`s not quite in the best state of mind either. The best I could think to describe him in his current condition is this: Pissed the **HELL** off. Leon pointed it out earlier, if you didn`t notice: Chapman **would** have taken out Rommel if not for that choker on his neck electricuting the daylights out of him.  
  
**Vile21x:** I`m not entirely sure about Leena being back to 'normal' so far. Guess we`ll have to find out over the course of the rest of the story, eh? :P  
  
Welp, that`s all for now folks! No Bit or Vega this chapter but I got to just about as many people as I could without lengthening the hell out of it, sooooo...  
  
Enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	9. The Day After

  
  
**Foreword:** Preferably one of those 'Well what the hell do we do now?' songs for this one.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos  
** The Day After   
  
  
  


In the desert, two figures walked towards the slightly brutalized edge of Romeo City. It was still the early morning, around ten or eleven in fact. The temperature was actually quite bareable around Romeo City, even during the summer it only got up to the low 80s at most. It was dry though, and that was why there was so little rainfall. The city itself was built around an ancient water reserve that had once been scouted out by a disturbed youth with red hair and a keen sense of irony.   
  
The youth had been helping Gunther Prozen look for a place to set a base at, and he would one day be known as Hiltz. That was another story though, for another day entirely and it didn`t particularly concern either of the two pilots who were making the lonely walk towards the city, their Zoids both lying little more than a half a mile behind them.   
  
The two were a bit ragged, Leon still had the smell of soot and smoke all over him from the Liger`s cockpit, Pierce looked to be the perfect mixture of calm and exhaustion, several hairs sticking out at random from her normally well-kept mane. Each had their hands in their pockets, each was walking out of step with each other but both looked more than a little relaxed for people who had just gone the whole nine yards with what amounted to death on a stick.   
  
"So..." Pierce began, idly looking around for something of interest. Being a person who effectively lived more for the moment than anything else, she tended to need _something_ to focus on, and right now the only things that really stood out were devestation, two brutalized Zoids behind her and a man in his early-mid-twenties walking alongside her. And he wasn`t much of a conversationalist so that didn`t help much.   
  
"Don`t talk much, do you?"   
  
"My only travelling companion has a razor wit and she`s not afraid to use it," Leon replied with a shrug. "That and we already know everything about each other and we`re together a lot so there`s nothing to really talk about most of the time."   
  
"... What are you, lovers?" Pierce asked amusedly.   
  
"Not even close," Leon answered without a hint of reserve or anxiety. "Naomi and I are just partners, even if we don`t have secrets from each other."   
  
"Awww... How cute, I`ll bet you even bathe together!" She joked, attempting to make light of the situation. Leon`s sense of humor was about as bland as a brick wall though.   
  
"We do sometimes, actually."   
  
Pierce almost stumbled a few steps and took on a fairly mortified expression, blankly staring at him with one of those weird looks that people gave when they were surprised. "Wait... You`re not lovers, but you bathe together sometimes..."   
  
"No, we`re not sex-buddies," Leon cut her off before she could even jump to the conclusion.   
  
"Then what the hell are you?"   
  
"Just partners. Neither of us cares, and she`s interested in someone else," he said with another shrug, still focused straight ahead. Pierce finally regained her composure after several seconds, looking a bit more amused than before now that she knew a bit about the two. At least now she had the potential to find some insult fodder on Naomi for that angsty romance novel comments.   
  
"So who`s the _un_lucky guy?" She asked.   
  
"Brad Hunter, I think you might have met him before," Leon replied, unsure. Pierce nodded.   
  
"I think I spoke to him once or twice at the party after the Royal Cup," she said after a brief pause, trying to remember. "Let`s see... As tall as you, less broadened shoulders, slimmer build, long hair, more squared-off chin..."   
  
"He`s also a bit more tanned than me," Leon added, holding up the arm with no sleeve covering it, obviously indicating the fact that he, like his sister, was a bit on the pale side. Pierce gave another nod before speaking again. "I remember him. Guy could stand to clean his hair more often though..."   
  
"Telling Brad to use a hairbrush is like trying to get Bit Cloud to think before he does something," Leon explained with a hint of dry sarcasm edging at his voice.   
  
"Ain`t _that_ the truth."   
  
"Bit`s the blonde one, by the way," Leon said as an afterthought.   
  
"I knew that already. He could also stand to hit the gym once in a while," Pierce replied, remembering her own meeting with the Royal Cup champion. "Little shrimp thought he could lecture me..."   
  
"Bit`s weird like that. Don`t mind him, even if he _is_ right about talking to a Zoid."   
  
"... Oh great, you`re only a _lesser_ weirdo," Pierce muttered.   
  
"You`re a weirdo too, you wouldn`t be piloting a Zoid if you weren`t," Leon pointed out without missing a beat, just as the two closed in on city limits, changing direction slightly to get onto one of the local - and empty - roads. "Besides, normalcy is for those who can afford it. I don`t think that applies to anyone anymore," he added.   
  
"Anyone ever tell you you`d make a good speech writer?"   
  
"Several," Leon answered.   
  
"You make a better pilot though," she added again as the two continued along, passing by another row of buildings that had been riddled with bullets over the course of the night and the morning. "Speech writing doesn`t seem to suit you..."   
  
"You`re right. I _hate_ talking."   
  
"More a man of action then?"   
  
A pause.   
  
"No. Just lazy."   
  
Both chuckled blandly and came to a stop after several seconds more, looking around as the sound of clapping filled their ears. They`d passed through the remaining two rows of housing and development, making it into what amounted as the _actual_ city, only to find a crowd had lined along the edge of the street, waiting for them. It was almost like a victory celebration, and in a sense - given that the city still _existed_ and the people in it were still actually _alive_ - they weren`t too incorrect in that assumption. After all, the only goal of the defenders was to insure the survival of the people they were protecting, nothing more, nothing less.   
  
For the most part, those people were alive.   
  
An odd smile etched it`s way onto Pierce and Leon`s faces, and after several seconds, they began to continue walking, each regarding the people who had gathered on the streets, most of whom were shouting things like 'good job' or 'way to go' or 'thank you' at the top of their lungs, and occasionally there _were_ a few cat calls from some of the people involved. Pierce paid little mind to them, letting out a vaguely unamused smile in response.   
  
Finally though, Leon broke their mutual, all-smiles-no-speech silence, speaking in a somewhat subdued, but still enthusiastic tone.   
  
"Should I?" He asked, drawing a hand out of his pocket as the moment started to take it`s effect on him in full force. After all, the people _were_ cheering for him as well as for her, it was nice to get some sort of satisfaction out of one`s work - however unofficial and last minute it had been. The woman beside him, for her part, merely smirked mockingly before giving a nod replying.   
  
"If you do, I will," she said, drawing her own hand from her coat pocket in the process. Leon gave a thoughtful sound before slowly beginning raise his arm. He stopped halfway, at first, somewhat embarrassed at himself but only passively. As always, he didn`t particularly favor doing what his emotions told him, but then again, these weren`t _just his_ emotions doing the talking.   
  
After that brief pause, his arm finished raising up all the way, his hand initially held in a fist before two fingers straightened up and spread into a V-sign, holding that way from then on. The gesture was followed wordlessly by Pierce, who looked as if she was going to die laughing at any second, but the people around them both were utterly serious in mimicking the symbol, each throwing one hand into the air and making a V-sign while shouting out their praise.   
  
"Who knew defeat could feel so good?" She asked, though he couldn`t tell if it was sarcasm or honesty in her voice. Either way though, he had to agree.   
  
"No arguement there," he said after a few seconds.   
  
  
Food.   
  
Food usually brought comfort, for some reason. At least that was what it did for him, he didn`t know if it did the same for anyone else in his relatively small circle of friends. Food was never judgemental, it was never something that told him to get his act together, to study harder, to lengthen his attention span, to work out more, and it didn`t tell him what he should do with his life. All food did was sit there and be eaten. For some inexplicable reason, that made him feel comfortable. Maybe it was the taste, maybe it was the feeling that he wouldn`t need to eat anything else for a while, maybe it was the fact that he was doing something that would help him survive without having to think of more important things.   
  
Right now though, food wasn`t doing jack squat for Bit Cloud. Military food wasn`t as bad as some people made it out to be, and while the only form of potatoes he ever really liked was usually french fries or bits and pieces of potato-stuff in his steaks, he had ordered some mash potatoes for the hell of it. Along with four or five random pieces of chicken and some fruit-looking... Thing that the server identified as a 'Guylos palm fruit.'   
  
Said-palm fruit was green, covered in some sort of fuzz and smelled like a bag of garbage. Maybe military food _was_ as bad as people said...   
  
But that didn`t bother him. He hadn`t even eaten. He`d spent the past half hour just staring at what he`d ordered for breakfast. For anyone who knew Bit Cloud`s eating habits, this was something that could prove _highly_ disturbing.   
  
** [**_"You bastards think you can interrupt on my matches?" He asked with contempt blaring in his voice.   
  
There would be no mercy for the intruders, as far as he was concerned at the moment, mercy was a foriegn concept that had no bearing on the present, he didn`t even know what the word meant. Armored panels capable of withstanding **hundreds** of missile, ballistic and energy attacks in a row flipped open with a dozen mirroring clacks, exposing the Liger Zero Panzer`s incredibly **dangerous** secondary arsenal of surface-to-air/ground cluster missiles.   
  
Teeth grit, and the relative darkness of the cockpit was shattered as hundreds of miniature video screens popped up, super-imposed onto the main monitor of the Liger`s cockpit, both pilot and Zoid growling as one. It had been an afront to his own pride and honor, and it had been an attack on his friends and a rival he`d yet to defeat. Unforgivable in every way, and he intended on making that perfectly clear.   
  
"**I DON`T THINK SO!**"_**]**   
  
Finally, he decided, turning around on the seat and standing up.   
  
"I`m not hungry..."   
  
And with that, Bit walked away from the only thing that really ever seemed to give him _any_ comfort other than battle and the Liger Zero. It just wasn`t working this morning, and without another word, he -   
  
** [**_Bit!   
  
"Keep fighting..."   
  
An explosion. Glass shattered, **pain** and crimson clouded his vision.   
  
"**Keep fighting!**"   
  
I can`t keep this up for much longer...   
  
Seconds of violence went by. Death, destruction, more pain. But still, he kept up...   
  
"**KEEP FIGHTING!!!**"_**]**   
  
- left the cafeteria building, crossing through the doors and onto the grounds of the base. For someone so used to being utterly sure of himself over the course of the past two years of being a junk dealer, and a few months as a pilot, doubt was unnerving at best. He rarely questioned himself, his conscience didn`t seem to plague him anymore but...   
  
** [**_"As our age comes to it`s end..."_**]**   
  
This wasn`t really just his conscience. This was his humanity he was questioning now, his right to call himself one of the good guys. Was he really like Kale? Or was he worse?   
  
** [**_"So, does a new one begin."   
  
Click. Boom. Game over._**]**   
  
For the first time in months, Bit Cloud found that he didn`t have the answer for once, and Zeke wouldn`t provide it to him. That very revelation nagged at him almost as badly as everything else did. It nagged, it angered him and it left him feeling alone. Bit didn`t like feeling alone, he also didn`t like grief.   
  
But he had that too. In spades.   
  
** [**_"**FIONA!!!**"_**]**   
  
It was an empty feeling. A part of him felt like nothing had changed, another felt like the entire world had gone to hell and another still felt that part was right. A small minority within his thoughts felt that hope remained but an ever smaller, more powerful minority was laughing insanely.   
  
** [**_"**IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!**"_**]**   
  
He wanted to sit down and do nothing, he wanted to cry for his many-greats grandmother, he wanted to grieve for the men and women he had thoughtlessly, ruthlessly slaughtered one after another. He wanted smile and feel hope, like Fiona would`ve told him to, and at the same time...   
  
At the same time as all of this...   
  
Some vacant, long undisturbed part of his soul wanted him to take out his Handleblade and slowly, torturously slit the throats of everyone within a hundred yards before finding a Zoid and killing everything in sight.   
  
That terrified him.   
  
** [**_He stared at the Devil. He saw himself staring right back._**]**   
  
It terrified him to no ends, and he didn`t know -   
  
** [**_"I..."_**]**   
  
- how to -   
  
** [**_"Hate..."_**]**   
  
- _make it_ -   
  
** [**_"You."_**]**   
  
- **_STOP_**.   
  
Alone on a base filled with at _least_ ten thousand people, Bit Cloud searched himself for the answers he sought, staring at his feet and absently wandering wherever they lead him. His search was in vane though, for he wasn`t the one with the answers, not this time.   
  
  
"Nnnnmgbleh..."   
  
The sound wasn`t exactly coherent, but it was still a good sign that he was at _least_ alive. It brought an assuring, anchoring growl from something nearby. The presence registered, but at the same time it didn`t. Comforting and disconcerting at the same time, it still proved enough to stir his eyes open.   
  
_ Everything_ was blurred. Breathing was painful, he had numerous, vague pin pricks lining his arms and a few on his chest, he couldn`t tell if he was wearing any underwear or not and it was numbing just to try and shift around, but shift around he did, at least from the shoulders up. With a slow, sickly motion, his head lulled to the side, and tired, brown eyes came to focus distinctly on the slender shape that lumbered over him in his cramped confines. Yellow contrasting with black, overshadowed by several different shades of blue, most of it a dark, metallic variety.   
  
And the yellow seemed a bit silvery at the bottom edge.   
  
"... I..." He cut himself off, unable to finish the sentence. Something maternal sounded from the creature next to him, and he felt what should have been a cold, dangerously clawed hand stroke softly over one cheek. At least it should have been cold and dangerous, but in this case, it was warm, even somewhat affectionate. Almost like his own mother`s hand whenever she had actually tried to _be_ a mother to him when he was younger.   
  
** Sleep, Vega. We`re both hurt and exhausted, I can`t completely heal you yet.   
  
** "... Specular?" He asked after a pause, throat parched and dry, but voice still ringing out smoothly, however distressed it was.   
  
** Yes?   
  
** "... I wanna go home... Now..." He mumbled out, never once taking his still-blurry eyes off of the Organoid`s head. "I just wanna be left alone..." He said, having finally given up on trying to stop Kale. That didn`t matter to him anymore, his mother didn`t matter, _nothing_ mattered. It had been too much pain and too much responsibility to be a hero before, and it was too much now. He just couldn`t do it anymore.   
  
Vega needed a break from the fighting. It had been fun when it wasn`t life-or-death, but now he needed some peace, and his seeming phobia of large groups prevented that completely.   
  
** I know**, the Organoid replied with a caring manner to it that was just inhuman. **We`ll go back to the cabin... Tomorrow. Right now, we just have to rest, and gather our strength.**   
  
"... Will we even be alive tomorrow?" Vega asked tiredly, his voice laced with uncertainty that shouldn`t have been there. Some part of him just... _Knew_ that something horrible was coming. Something horrible had already happened - several times, in fact - but still.   
  
** And all the days after that. Close your eyes, Vega. I`ll watch over you.   
  
** A ragged, utterly weary smile. In his life, only six people had ever treated him as though he was more than _just_ a stupid kid, or _just_ some pawn being used to expand his mother`s influence in the Backdraft Group. Bit Cloud, Jack Sisco, the Tasker sisters and Kale Obscura. Of those six, emotions varied. Jack and the Taskers seemed more weary and respectful of him after their confrontations with him, Bit treated him like a mix between a little brother, an adult and a kid who was mature enough to think for himself most of the time and Kale...   
  
Well, Kale was too busy trying to _kill him_ to treat him like an actual kid.   
  
Specular though... She treated him like he _wanted_ to be treated. With respect and a love that was familiar, and paternal. She could never replace Sarah Obscura as his actual mother, just like Bit could never quite replace Kale as his actual brother, but she did the trick well enough that it helped mend the old wounds and set him at ease.   
  
And with his mind at ease, his body soon followed. Unconscious again, the only sound to follow in the curtain-made room was that of medical machinery and slow, labored breaths by a sleeping eleven year old, watched over by an undyingly loyal creature that had bound itself into every fiber of his being.   
  
  
The bridge of a Whale King. It was uncomfortable to those on board for a number of reasons. To Leyon Martin, it was uncomfortable because it was so quiet. He couldn`t even hear his own thoughts because of the silence that filled the room, broken only by the repetitive mumblings of the pacing teenager not too far behind him. To Sarah Obscura, it was uncomfortable because she was still distant from her sons. She was literally worried to the point of sickness over Vega, and Kale was the kind of son who could drive any sane parent to thoughts of justifiable homicide from time to time.   
  
For Steven Tauros, it was uncomfortable for two simple reasons. The first was that the Whale King in question was a carrier Zoid flying at close to mach one, several _thousand_ feet off the ground. He was _terrified_ of heights in most cases, and as a result, merely kept his eyes shut or kept looking _away_ from the monitor that showed outside the carrier itself, leaning against a wall opposite of Sarah Obscura, though she was staring vacantly at the only person in the room who was under the age of thirty-nine.   
  
Steven was also uncomfortable for the plain reason that the thing was named after a nickname given to his long dead wife by one of his(formerly) most bitter rivals. That tended to make anyone feel a bit out of it in most cases.   
  
Leena was uncomfortable because the name of a Zoid had triggered some of her own insecurities, and as a result, she was trying to remedy that. She did this by pacing around in a circle in the center of the control room, occasionally mumbling out possible name changes for the Uglena. She didn`t _want_ the Zoid - it didn`t have enough guns for her overkill-favoring tastes - but if she was going to have to see it every single time she entered the hangar it was going to need a new name. One that didn`t sound like 'Ugly Leena,' which caused what remained of her once inflated vanity to haunt her rather viciously because she was covered in scars, now wore fairly nerdy looking glasses and the edges of most of her hair was still singed a bit on the black side.   
  
She didn`t use hair dye of course, Leena had always been too proud of her appearance to bother with anything more than the occasional lipstick and a small bit of make-up here and there, usually just eyeliner. At present though, she refrained from using anything to 'beautify' herself out of sheer unadulterated spite. Violently losing one`s good looks tended to leave most people more than a tad embittered that society`s views on most people revolved around just that: Their appearance.   
  
"Bulena? ... No, too corny..."   
  
Silence.   
  
"Gun Raptor? Possible."   
  
Silence. Leyon slurped up some of his noodles, but mostly just stared at the screen.   
  
"Sickle Sniper? ... Hmmmm..."   
  
Silence. Steve fidgeted somewhat, vacantly picking one of his ears with one of his pinkies and thinking how much he missed staring over his vast collection of toy Zoids.   
  
"... Errr... Geno Raptor? ... _No_."   
  
Silence. Sarah sighed and hung her head, drawn into thoughts of how things could`ve been vastly different if she had just settled her differences with Vega and Kale`s father, or if she had never gotten involved in the Backdraft to begin with. But that always lead to the thoughts of 'what else could I have done?' which inevitably lead her to the answer of 'nothing,' followed by more what-ifs.   
  
"Blaze Raptor?"   
  
Silence. Leena tossed another name into the stockpile, continuing to pace around in a circle. Her snug-fitting jeans and the turtle neck sweatshirt seemed strangely _out_ of place on someone with her figure, as did the too-white sneakers. The glasses made her look a little cuter, but the scars... The scars just damaged everything. Her arms were still crossed over her chest though, her hands hidden as a result, and her steps were a bit stressed but always unerring. She never stumbled once.   
  
"Neo Sniper?"   
  
Silence. The Empress Heart continued along on it`s flight path, headed for Romeo City. Farentown was much closer, yes, but Romeo City was lined up with Garnhelm Base, and Stigma had mentioned - in an e-mail prior to the temporary crash of the internet - that Vega and possibly Bit were both located somewhere around that area. Leon was in Romeo, Bit and Vega were both apparently at Garnhelm. It was the quickest way to get at least _some_ of the Blitz Team back together again.   
  
_ Silence_. And nothing else.   
  
  
"Let go of me!" Yelled a black haired young man in his late teens to early twenties, only to have his arms gripped that much tighter by two far larger men, who held him several feet off the ground like he was a paperweight. His hands were cuffed behind his back, the choker on his neck was so tight that it made it a bit annoying to try and breathe properly and his shoulders were in pain because the majority of his weight was resting against them, pulling down from below rather than pushing from above.   
  
"I think not," a voice as smooth as glass and twice as sharp replied, villainous intent inking it`s way into the air so thickly that Bill almost passed out from it`s putrid stench. A door swiped open, blackness filled his vision as the guards hauled him into a room, and the sound of an automatic spray mechanism going off echoed into his ears not long after that. The lights flipped open for the first time in what must have been days, and as a result, one captive finally saw the other.   
  
He bore only a passing resemblance to Vilhelm now, but there were still traces of something charismatic in the ragged looking shell of a man that was chained so hatefully to the wall. The shackles on his wrists alone were enormous, weighted so that he probably couldn`t even lift his arms very well, and those on his ankles didn`t look terribly lighter. There was another, lighter one around his neck, but this one was also different because it was clean, a surgical white with a small, mechanical looking port on the side of the neck where one of the major veins leading into the brain was located. It looked more like a collar than anything else.   
  
"... What in the hell..."   
  
"Say hello to Henry. My brother," Vilhelm replied with a smile, grabbing the ragged looking fellow by his unkempt, neck-length black hair and literally yanking his head up so that Bill could see his twisted face. Still baring only a passive resemblance to his brother, Henry`s features looked worn out far too early in his life. Chapman instantly thought he was fifty from the way his skin looked, but the lack of actual wrinkles and the color of his hair broke that assumption with ease. He looked unhealthy in every way, too thin from not eating enough, like all he was given were vitamins, just enough nutrient packs and the like, no actual _substance_ being provided. His only clothes were a pair of dirty, filthy, foul smelling and equally disgusting looking briefs, nothing else.   
  
At the mortified look across his captive gladiator`s face, Rommel swiftly brought up one hand, in which was held something that looked like a surgical 'gun' or something, an injector system that looked like it linked right into Henry`s collar.   
  
"This is an injection device, it carries five to six ounces of a highly effective, and highly illegal drug which stimulates the body`s pleasure centers, along with heightening the central processing areas of the brain. It causes the injectee to feel a sense of euphoria, and it enhances their reflexes to the extreme, speeding up thought processes and heightening the senses as well."   
  
Bill was silent, finally regarding what Rommel had just said.   
  
"But it`s also highly addictive, and the feelings it causes drastically shorten with every use."   
  
He already knew what this was leading to.   
  
"I don`t _have_ to kill you, Chapman. Like I said before, I can always turn you into dear Henry, here," Vilhelm exclaimed with another cold, malicious smile that made Bill`s very blood crawl with a thousand venomous spiders. Henry only smiled in a drug addled ecstasy of wonderous thoughts and feelings, drooling from the side of his mouth as those faded-green eyes shimmered with badly dilating pupils.   
  
"Get him out, now," Vilhelm ordered after a few seconds of allowing the message to sink in, and the guards replied in kind. Even Kale Obscura or Bit Cloud would have shattered under the pressure that Rommel was applying to Chapman`s weary, already crumbling psyche, but the former champion held on to some absent shimmer of hope that didn`t exist anymore.   
  
Without a word, the guards were gone, taking Bill away with them to be beaten lightly and thrown back into his cell in a way that wouldn`t prevent him from piloting.   
  
Vilhelm on the other hand, merely stayed behind, regarding his tortured brother with amusement and a scheming look in his eyes. He left not long after, making doubly sure to turn off the one light in the room, never once saying anything of comfort to the brutalized soul he had once called 'family' without ever meaning it.   
  
  
Calm. How in the _Hell_ was that guy so calm? That was the question currently forcing itself into Leyla Tsun`s thoughts. She could see him perfectly, even in what should have been - and _was_, for her compatriots - pitch darkness, and all he was doing was sitting there, mumbling out things to himself.   
  
"There`s no fear. There`s peace. There`s no panic, only calm. There`s no confusion, only clarity. There`s no captivity, only freedom..." He kept repeating the phrase, never missing a step once. For whatever reason, Brad just kept saying the same string of words over and over again. His state of mind was set towards freedom, but he didn`t rush toward it. That was something he had vaguely in common with Leon Tauros: He _thought_ things out. He had patience, he didn`t blindly rush in, but he did have emotions and he paid a lot of attention to them.   
  
It almost looked like he was using the phrase as something to focus on during meditation.   
  
Jamie didn`t seem to notice, he was laying down with his head calmly situated in Leyla`s lap, staring up at the blackness where the ceiling was located, one hand laying across his stomach, the other situated at his shoulder, clasping to one of her own. The two teens had both been oddly silent while Brad had been doing nothing but mumbling to himself, simply regarding their current situation and thinking. Occasionally they would interact, usually small gestures only though.   
  
A squeeze of hands, the occasional squirming to get closer, mutual sighs or yawns, whatever worked. It was really all they could do, there was no escape.   
  
Yet.   
  
That 'yet,' and Jamie, were all that were really keeping Leyla going at present. A night in an uncontrolled criminal insane asylum, going crazy in the first place, having two personalities 'die' and being seperated from the only people she really thought of as family - in addition to the shock of the flood of memories invading her mind even to this very moment - were more than enough to jolt her out of really doing anything for now.   
  
But that 'yet' represented hope. Jamie represented the pillar of that hope. They were fast developing a mutual interdependence on each other, and it wasn`t just because they felt they were in love. They were each other`s crutches. Where one fell, the other tried to hold firm, where one stumbled, the other tried to stay steady and where one was somber, the other tried to remain at least somewhat upbeat.   
  
It was really all they could do...   
  
  
"Tick..."   
  
A second flew by. A murderous thought went with it.   
  
"Tock..."   
  
Another second flew by, bringing with it another murderous thought.   
  
"Tick..."   
  
Another second. With it, a cold, malicious smile.   
  
"Tock..."   
  
Kale Obscura was amused at the expression of his supposed captors as they slipped his cell door open, one holding an assault rifle in his direction, the other setting a tray of food down along with a bottle of water at inner boundary of the doorway, quickly straightening up and backing away.   
  
"Tick..."   
  
He could have killed them before the armed guard could even finish thinking to pull the trigger. That thought alone made his smile seem all the more deadly, like a viper coiled to strike.   
  
"Tock..."   
  
Both men, each looking like they`d just stared at the grim reaper, stepped back from the door, and the unarmed guard promptly slammed it shut without a word. Kale paused only briefly to raise a hand in a dastardly little wave at the two, one that had 'I`m going to paint my face in your blood and dance on your graves' written all over it.   
  
Each cringed at the gesture, and quickly began to walk away.   
  
"Tick..."   
  
The hallway door opened.   
  
"Tock..."   
  
And slammed shut by the time he`d spoken again.   
  
"Only I..."   
  
The lock flew into place on the other side of the hallway door.   
  
"Know the beat of the clock..."   
  
A cruel chuckle. The heartbeat of a demon roared in his ears, growing more dangerous with each hour. He was guessing that it was near late afternoon now, which meant he would only have to wait through the night and then the day that went with it.   
  
He was going to particularly enjoy the sound of hearing the necks of those tow individuals snap like twigs, perhaps listening to their final cries in slow motion as he ended their lives. But that could wait.   
  
He _was_ patient after all. Time could only last so long.   
  
"Tick..."   
  
The smile finally faded.   
  
"Tock..."   
  
Anyone could see death in the eyes of Kale Obscura as he stood up, continuing to speak the two words out, lazily walking over and grabbing his food.   
  


_ End Chapter Nine_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Hats off to anyone geeky enough to recognize the vague Star Wars reference.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Borealis has no l33t ninja skillz, he has Kirk-Fu *Snicker.* Hats off again to anyone geeky enough to recognize the vague scifi reference >_>; And if the prequel is ever written, it`ll revolve mainly only around Thomas, possibly Fiona, Moonbay and Irvine, I **highly** doubt anyone else will play more than a supporting role. **If** it`s written. As for the Black Ultra... Since when have I flung something at you involving super death machines that seems remotely logical? :P  
  
**Illidan:** Actually, that 'typo' was intended :P The real typo was "before it could his the Whale King?" >_> The horrific violence and gore isn`t going to be coming for a little while longer. After all, the people need a freaking break or they`re all gonna keel over and die in bloodless exhaustion :P As for Mark and Kyle... I have plans for those two, but I`m not sure of reliving the Suicide Days is among them...  
  
Well, that`s all for now folks. Enjoy, leave a review and see ya next time! Sh33p out. 


	10. Force

  
  
**Foreword:** Zoids - Force suits the majority of this one. Pick your own for everything else.  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
_ Force_   
  
  
  
"There`s something else I`ve been meaning to ask you," Pierce began, even as the two of them plopped down tiredly onto a bench that sat at what had once been an ordinary bus shop. Around them, the scenery was... Inspiring to say the least. Firefighters, Guardians, volunteers, policemen, medics - everyone rushed around through the streets, many on foot. Barely a block away, one of the taller buildings in Romeo City was _still_ smoking and looking as if half of it`s guts had been ripped out by one of the explosions from the previous night.   
  
A lingering silence passed between the two, sitting on a bench at a street corner in the middle of the day was normally quite mundane. For the two pilots, though, it was a luxury that they could only scantly manage to afford. Leon let out a sigh that went for both of them, and Pierce merely flung her arms behind the bench and stared vacantly at the building in the close distance. If it fell, it would fall away from them, from the looks of things, but if it fell, a lot of people were going to be hurt or killed. Times had changed, the building was just a symbol of that.   
  
It also wasn`t unique. Fires had sprang back up in several places, and where one of the largest shops in the city had once stood, there was now but a singular crater, imperfectly rounded, a few dozen feet deep and encompasing several blocks in all directions, the buildings around it having to be smashed by a local Gustav crew who knew the things would just burn down and would take too much effort to salvage. It was just one of many such things.   
  
Finally though, the silence broke, and it was Leon who broke it, crossing his arms over his chest and leering uneasily at several of the passing firefighters, each carrying fresh oxygen tanks, and two of them dragging along a hose that looked like it weighed more than either of them put together several times over. A far cry from when they`d been hailed as heroes merely an hour or so before.   
  
"Ask away," he said, though it was more a request than an order.   
  
"You don`t seem like you were headed here from the start," Pierce began, looking for the words. "And your partner doesn`t seem like Queen Charity if she`d leave you to do the fighting alone for so long. So what brought you here?" She asked.   
  
"An epiphany I didn`t understand until last night, when everything started going to Hell."   
  
"An epiphany, eh? Care to explain, O noble hero?" She asked, though the sarcasm in her voice was so laced with exhaustion that Leon doubted she could throw a serious insult or a genuinely humorful joke out if she wanted. He felt about the same, only a bit more drained.   
  
"It started about... Four, five... Maybe six months ago," he started, pausing briefly and wincing as another explosion wracked the high rise building that stood away from them like a dying giant, sitting at the edge of the cluster of similar buildings and the like that inhabited the center of Romeo City. "Back then, I was just a pilot for the Blitz Team, the leader, in fact. Then one day, I met him."   
  
"Him?" Pierce asked skeptically. "If this is-" "- it isn`t. I like women, thank you _very much_," Leon interrupted dryly. Pierce blinked. "Then why, dear Leon, haven`t you been hitting on me like a normal guy would?" She asked bluntly. "... Okay, so I have no sex drive. _Moving along_," he switched back to the subject at hand.   
  
"Bit Cloud. The day I woke up to find him missing from the Team hangar, then vanishing off into the desert only to appear again in his first battle - and actually _win_ the thing on his own, I knew that there was something different about him. People like Bit just aren`t _born_ without a damn good reason, you know?" He asked. "The first time I looked into his eyes after he climbed out of the Liger Zero, I knew that Fate had something planned for him, _and_ for me. I wouldn`t have stumbled into him any other way."   
  
"And did you figure out what that plan is?" Pierce asked, a bit disinterested. An ambulance blared by at thirty over the speed limit, she barely noticed. Leon just gave a nod.   
  
"Bit Cloud is either the world`s savior in waiting, born just for this conflict, or he`s a demon without even knowing it."   
  
"And how do you figure into all of this?"   
  
"I didn`t figure that out until last night."   
  
"And?"   
  
"I`m starting to think I`m nothing more than a contingency plan of some kind," he answered, glancing off blandly at another passing ambulance, its sirens shrieking out the roar of another, far smaller explosion.   
  
"What do you mean?" She asked, a bit unbelieving of his view on things. Leon was a bit strange, yes, but then again - so was just about everyone she`d met over the past few months. Even Oscar Hameros was eccentric, and Bit took the freaking cake - assuming he hadn`t eaten it already.   
  
"Take a look around," Leon ordered. "Look into the big picture, if you will. You, me, people like Mark and Kyle, the Lightning Team, Stigma Stoller, Harabec, even dad and Leyon... Hell, maybe even Vega Obscura," he said, though she clearly wasn`t following him terribly well. He clarified it though, without too much effort:   
  
"We`re the B Team. The failsafe mechanism, the people waiting and hoping they never get called upon to take the place of those like Bit."   
  
"I doubt that," Pierce commented. "A situation like this doesn`t leave room for a B Team. It only leaves room for allies and enemies, we`re all either on the front lines at once, together or we`re dead in no-man`s land," she said plainly, putting her own spin on things. Leon just shrugged.   
  
"Maybe, but I`m really not up for debating philosophy right now..."   
  
"Coffee`d be good."   
  
"All the shops have been closed."   
  
"Yeah, the end of the world doesn`t leave much room for business," Pierce commented thoughtfully, leaning her head back over the top of the bench. Leon just chuckled dimly and prayed that he would get the chance to sleep soon.   
  
  
_ "No."_   
  
** [**_"**SHOWTIME**-"_**]**   
  
He harshly smacked the side of his head, as if physical self-abuse would somehow knock his conscience out of whack and allow him to actually think of something _other_ than his increasing similarities to Kale Obscura. They disturbed him to no end, bringing an endless array of violent thoughts into his normally freedom-consumed mind. Where once there had been thoughts of say... Stealing one of Leena`s chocolate donuts and teasing her by running around and slowly eating it, bite by bite, now there was a thought of beating the girl to death with nothing but his fists.   
  
And what scared him the most about this was that a part of his overacting conscience was _agreeing_ that it was something he had the motivation to do. Where once had been thoughts of childhood desires to run as fast as a Lightning Saix, there were now thoughts of strangling one of the Tasker sisters for being instrumental in his only real defeat. He didn`t know which one, of course, Bit had never been terribly efficient at remembering the identities of women by chance encounters, and he frankly sucked at lining their faces up with their names.   
  
Still, there was a silent agreement to thoughts like that, and it continued.   
  
A thought of wanting unending freedom was replaced by wanting to belt the Wild Eagle`s jaw off with a chain for being such a smug bastard, just to humble him to the docile type of creature that Jamie was... And that thought inevitably lead to the visual of nailing Jamie`s shoulders to a catwalk and shooting him with the machine gun of his own - retired - Pteras until nothing was left.   
  
A thought of wanting to sleep in his old bed on the Blitz Team base would be replaced by the thought of planting one side of Brad`s head on the heating plate of a coffee maker after letting it get especially hot, then allowing the coffee itself to slowly drip down into one of his ears, all the while punching his face in during the process.   
  
There was still agreement though. Somewhere.   
  
It was slowly, torturously eating at his sanity, and through his sanity, it was eating at his very soul. Everything that had ever been solid in his life was being called into question - devotion to his friends, his lack of true material wants, his Bond to Zeke and the Liger, his disgust for his family, contempt for his ex-girlfriend, his cares for Fiona, his ultimate, steadfast belief that he was good at heart, and deserved the freedom he truly longed for.   
  
And in those questions were anger, being thrown at him by something he didn`t understand. Walking along silently until finally arriving at a point near the edge of the base, Bit finally realized where he was. Without a word though, he leered out, taking in the sight before him with a vague awe, one that was muffled to the extreme.   
  
Solemnly, he leaned against the metal, uprisen wall that sat at the very edge of the base. There weren`t any guards on duty, for the simple reason that no one was available. _Every_ soldier on the base was too damn busy, or too needed somewhere else to hold the gate, so they`d left it to the security cameras and given up on doing anything more, it seemed.   
  
Thinking hard about it, for a moment at least, Bit realized that he and Vega had two of the only three Zoids in Garnhelm Base, the other being the Foe Hammer, which was effectively parked on one of the numerous landing circles that dotted the space near the hospital that Vega, Zeke, the Liger and that blue Organoid were near or in.   
  
Vega.   
  
_ "He challenged me,"_ Bit mused, regarding his own thoughts of the brutalized eleven year old with a strange mixture of brotherly affection - out of place as that was - and absolute contempt. He liked the challenges that becoming a Zoid Warrior had given him, it kept him on his toes, gave him something to _live_ for and kept him from thinking about his own problems. He was starting to hate Vega though, Vega had been a key cause in everything that had happened to him since the Royal Cup...   
  
But no, _no_. He wouldn`t focus hatred on a friend. He fought that part of him back, feeling the conflicting aspects of that small, blood thirsty part of his being cry out. 'No! I won`t be denied!' It seemed to say to him, rapidly bubbling closer to his surface but...   
  
He didn`t want it to. He wanted to be happy and carefree like the old days. He needed a target, an emotional scapegoat, someone he could vent his rage onto, and inevitably, that fell to a small number of subjects. Like any teenage male who`d been an outcast, those were his family and his ex-girlfriend. Unfortunately for her, the ex-girlfriend was just an inch or so closer to his contempt-o-meter`s breaking point than Richard Cloud was.   
  
_ "Damned slut,"_ he growled out in thought. _"Wish I`d ne-"   
  
_ ***BOOM!!!***   
  
The entire area rattled violently, he felt his teeth grinding together and his ears suddenly popped from a drastic, painful change in the local air pressure, while a secondary shockwave almost threw him further into the barrier wall than before, easily whipping the sands into a brief frenzy that shocked him out of his moping.   
  
The bombardment had begun.   
  
  
Two thousand of the Republic`s best remaining soldiers. The majority of the Zoids were Command Wolves, Shield Ligers, generalist types of things that did the vast majority of fighting in any war. In this case though, there were also multiple Gojulas units, and Bombard Ghustavs appropriately formed the mainstay of the rear lines, with those same Gojulas towering over them from behind. In front of each, in a staggered formation, were the Ligers and Wolves, out of the direct line of fire from friendly forces.   
  
And off to the side of this conglomerate of devestating firepower, in the sound proofed command and control center of a Europlos, Major Conrad Robertson sat in the thick of things. Disturbed as he was from earlier, he was still holding true to his specialty, and that was precision. Conrad was probably the single most precise officer that had ever graced the Helic Republican military, if he wanted to put a bullet through a nickle or a bomb into someone`s face from over a mile away - it would get there and it would get there _on time_ and _on target_.   
  
That was why he was the second-in-command of the current operation, rather than another, more experienced officer. General Morgan Hauser wouldn`t accept anyone else to coordinate such an attack, himself included. Robertson was literally only the second-in-command of this mission in name only, everywhere else, he was the one in charge.   
  
"First shots fired," a nearby officer reported, and the Europlos lumbered forward. While in truth it was only scarcely the height of a Gojulas` shoulder, the four legged Zoid was probably the slowest, most ungainly creation that any military had ever fielded. It was almost twice as armored as the Liger Zero Panzer, easily far larger, and it`s armament was severely limited for something of it`s size. An enormous two-way hammer that could only swing from left to right or right to left was situated on the tail, and while it was powerful enough to cave in an ordinary Zoid`s entire body, it was still easily dodged and couldn`t hit anything above or below it without considerable work on behalf of the Euro`s body.   
  
After that there were two fast rotating turrets on top, situated just aft of the command section. The first was primarily a targeting unit, though it could double as an electronic warfare tool since the lasers it used for target and range fighting could also be used for scrambling a missile guidance system or blinding an unlucky twit at several miles away without him ever knowing it. The second turret was both bigger and slower, holding two racks of four extremely powerful, guided missiles, with a gunner in a spherical pod on top who served to keep the things on target.   
  
And to top this limited arsenal off, the only real weapons the Zoid had were a battery of six triple machine guns firing in limited arcs, unable to aim straight ahead. There was a shield generator to offset the Zoid`s insane lack of armament for it`s size, but mostly it was utterly defenseless. The pilot crew sat in the head, composed of a pilot, co-pilot and a navigator, while the command crew - officers and a few enlisted - were situated in the bunker-looking half-circular structure that extended from the very middle of the top of it`s back.   
  
"Impact in five... Four... Three... Two..."   
  
If the vibrantly young woman who served as the weapons observer had intended on continuing to zero, her voice was completely shut out by the silent roar of the explosion in the distance. It was literally so loud that even through a supposedly sound proofed area, it wasn`t only detectable, but so loud that no one in the command crew could actually register it, instead finding themselves temporarily deafened for all of a second.   
  
"--_pact_!" The woman shouted, as if it was actually needed in the first place.   
  
"Reload!" Conrad shouted over the impending roar of an aftershock. The Europlos had literally trembled from the first one - and for a Zoid _that_ size, with _that_ level of durability, that meant the shockwave had been powerful enough to almost knock every other Zoid on the firing line back a step or two.   
  
Turning around in his chair, he glanced over at the comm-officer. "What`s the word from overhead?" He asked, listening to several clashing sonic booms as the Pteras squadrons and such blazed by in the skies, a Storm Sworder SO-type flew ahead of them, the black-and-white rotating disc atop it`s back and the near lack of armament being the obvious tip-off to it`s designation.   
  
"... Unconfirmed, the smoke and heat`s too high to see through from above," the officer replied quickly. Conrad grimaced thoughtfully. He - like any competent commander - didn`t like being left out of the know about his enemies. "Check with the Sniper groups, they should be able to peek through it," he ordered after a few seconds, figuring that the enhanced equipment of a Gunsniper might be able to see through the haze at ground level, if not the burgeoning miles-high cloud of belching black smoke, which he knew sheathed a dangerously intense fire that could melt even his walking fortress into molten slag in an instant.   
  
"Sniper group is unable to confirm either, they`re detecting a few cold spikes at the epicenter of the blast but nothing else," the officer stated.   
  
"All unit commanders reporting ready status," the tactical officer reported. While the comm-officer technically _did_ serve nearly the same job, the tactical officer`s job was more or less to keep tabs on the specific and important friendly and enemy movements. In short: She was Conrad`s eyes on the battlefield.   
  
"Good..."   
  
He waited.   
  
The flames from the first blast now rose high into the air, rippling through the black smoke in an epic depiction of Hell on Zi, eerily resembling a dragon`s face for a short moment, the flames tearing out in a manner that resembled demonic eyes, staring laughably down at would-be destructors.   
  
He waited though. Not because of hesitation or fear, but because of gut instinct. He might not have been the best interrogator, but he was definately among the best when it came to placing enough firepower onto a single target that even the Death Saurer would cringe to some extent or other.   
  
"Fire."   
  
The order was calm, blunt, straight to the point and utterly universal for everyone who had a gun.   
  
Another muffled explosion of gunfire, the Europlos gently creaked as the entire desert rattled from the first shockwave that came with the entire force unleashing it`s attack at once.   
  
  
Bit Cloud had learned his lesson. Having gone temporarily deaf and still wiping the sand off of his face and out of his hair, he had learned his lesson _very_ well:   
  
Do _**NOT**_ sit out front, completely unprotected, in the desert as the Helic military sought to blow the fucking Hell out of something with everything at their disposal. It just _wasn`t_ something you do.   
  
And it was when his ears finally regained their ability to actually hear things below the roar of the Liger itself, that he looked up in time to see the four Whale Kings and the local Hammerheads, accompanied by more Pteras, Storm Sworders and Redlers than he could get a glimpse of to count, all opening fire at once. Missiles, gunshots, beam cannons that were powerful enough to frag a Judge Satellite with terrifying ease - _all_ of it rained down toward a singular, perfectly acquired target that was now out of his sight, but he knew just what that target was.   
  
Another uncertainty hit him, but this time it was the uncertainty that he had prayed for all through the night and the day, never actually realizing that he had been doing so.   
  
"Maybe they really _can_ destroy that thing..."   
  
He barely even heard his own words, but he was smart enough not to repeat his earlier mistake of getting sandblasted, sidestepping out of the way of the entrance, moving behind the outer barrier wall and thoughtfully avoiding the literal flood of dust, dirt, hot air and sand that had just about knocked him unconscious all of a minute before.   
  
***BOOM!!!***   
  
This time it was even louder than before, in no small part due to the firepower being thrown out by the aerial Zoids, especially the Whale King Type II, which probably had almost as much firepower as the larger Whale Kings, despite being less than half the size. Hell, it was so loud that it could probably wake the dead, at least that`s what Bit was starting to think, a small shred of hope managing to outshine his lingering uncertainties of just about everything in general.   
  
  
The room rattled in abstract, ear-hurting silence. With a wince, it caused Vega to awaken. Dreary brown eyes pried open not long after that, a groan echoing off briefly before he reached up and started wiping away the gunk from his eyes.   
  
"Whuthehellwuz`at?" He asked, words slurring from exhaustion and the ringing that was still going on in his ears. If he didn`t know better, Vega would`ve sworn that the hospital windows had been cracked to some extent or other - with the possible exception of the fact that he couldn`t _see_ the windows.   
  
** A lesson in futility**, came the stark, blunted answer, Specular`s Voice had changed. It wasn`t his anymore, it seemed an order of magnitude less childlike and a good bit more feminine, similar to his mother`s but still different, like there was an underlying spite for just about everything but him. It was still something he vaguely recognized though, if only because he had heard it before, once or twice.   
  
"Futility?" He asked, shifting his eyes slowly to the right, allowing him to regard the less-blurry form of the Organoid that had been hanging over him like a protective hawk.   
  
** They`re trying to destroy something beyond their ability to even comprehend.   
  
** "... I still don`t get it," he muttered, staring up at the ceiling blankly. It was at that moment that two things happened:   
  
The Republicans fired off another enormous salvo at whatever they were trying to destroy, and the curtain swung open to reveal the same nurse who had been shocked out of her senses earlier when Bit had practically waltzed out of the hospital as if nothing had ever even happened. She looked pleasant, cheerful even, if not a bit rattled, and it took her all of four seconds to look up from the new set of IVs she`d been bringing in.   
  
As she did so, her eyes briefly twitched between staring at Vega`s newly conscious form, and the Organoid looming over him like a wolfhound, glaring almost hungrily at her. Fear struck, and the woman was about to screa-   
  
***BOOM!!!***   
  
-m but her voice was effectively muted by the roar of the combined impact from the entire assault force.   
  
"---- --- ------ ----?!" She tried to blurt out, only to find that she couldn`t even register her own words over the inhuman blare of the attack. "_**-------- ----!!!**_" She tried to scream out again, promptly stumbling back and knocking over the replacement IVs, even as Vega pried himself up on one elbow, using a tired hand to lift away the oxygen mask.   
  
"--- -- -- ---?" He asked, his lips reading an indecipherable question to the Organoid, which only gave a passing nod. A moment passed, and as the woman`s hearing returned, she caught the tail-end of a sentence.   
  
"------ --- --e help."   
  
A flash of neon blue and both were completely _gone_, leaving only a hole in the ceiling and causing the nurse to promptly faint in shock.   
  
  
_ Well, don`t **you** look like you had some fun...   
  
_ "Don`t mock me, Zeke," Bit muttered out, still dusting himself off and occasionally pausing to smack the sand out from in and around his ears, hair and clothing. "I`m seriously _not_ in the mood for it," he added dangerously, the enormous form the Liger Zero bearing a certain impassiveness in reply, not quite moving, not bothering with anything and generally just being left alone.   
  
_ You missed the chance to tell Vega, good-bye.   
  
_ "Well ain`t that just too freaking bad, huh?" The blonde growled out, unamused in the least at how this day had already turned out.   
  
_ Don`t take it out on me, Bit. I`ve been straining to keep you healed, Vega alive, the Fury from stoning over and Specular from dying - I`ve had a **long** night and a long day too.   
  
_ "You didn`t lose half your blood fighting a psychopath."   
  
_ Depends on your point of view_, Zeke said cryptically, saying nothing else as a blur flash streaked into the skies, arced high and then dove down through the top of the Hammerhead II Foe Hammer, vanishing within and emerging a second or so later, now considerably wider and considerably dimmer. _She`s straining herself too much_, Bit heard, though it sounded more like a barely concerned, exhausted mumble than a real critique. In all of the second that passed by next, he could swear that time seemed to slow down, allowing him, if only for that one moment, to look up as the blur of energy passed overhead and seemed to echo words out towards his partner.   
  
** You know where to find me, just don`t stay here too long.   
  
**_ I don`t intend to. Take care, you beautiful blue bitch.   
  
_** Will do, you snot nosed silver freak.   
  
** Time sped up and Bit found himself at an utter loss for words, observing unattentively as the blue streak whipped off into the heavens and vanished over the horizon to a destination unknown.   
  
"... And you said I wasn`t interrupting anything earlier," he smugly leered up at the Zoid.   
  
_ I didn`t say anything. Besides, she and I have always been like that. It`s a running joke.   
  
_ "... A joke, huh?"   
  
_ Yes. A joke.   
  
_ "A 230-something year old _joke_."   
  
Silence.   
  
_ Oh, shut up.   
  
_ For the first time in days on end, Bit Cloud let loose with one of those trademark **'SMACK ME!**' grins of his, and for a while, at least, the Organoid felt something _normal_ return, if only for a short while.   
  
The peaceful, grinning silence was shattered a few seconds later, not by gunfire, but by an irate yell.   
  
"**_WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!_**" Dana yelled, the overweight, middle-aged looking mother of three looking somewhere between ripping someones head off and screaming in utter failure.   
  
"Hmm?" Bit sounded calmly, glancing over his shoulder at her.   
  
"Didn`t you _see_ that?!"   
  
"Oh, you mean Vega?"   
  
"**_VEGA WAS WITH THAT THING?!_**" She yelped this time, jaw sagging for a moment. Bit shrugged.   
  
"Don`t worry, I`m _guessing_ that Specular - the Fury`s Organoid - just took him home," he explained without much caring to his voice, casually seeking to put his hands into his jacket pockets, only to realize that Fleiheit-styled body armor and a slate gray t-shirt underneath didn`t exactly have jacket pockets. He grimaced to himself, already missing his old clothes.   
  
"... I... Huh... Run that by me one more time?" Dana asked, temporarily dropping her intensity and mild contempt of just about everything in general, apparently too shocked to keep it up. Bit shrugged again and explained, this time more slowly, as if trying to tell it to a child.   
  
"The Organoid in the Berserk Fury is named Specular. She`s blue. She took Vega out of the hospital, then took the Fury, and right now, she`s _probably_ taking him home."   
  
"B-b-but Vega was... Hey, wait," she said, finally actually _recognizing_ him. Without all of the blood, dirt, and in military clothing, with the new, almost invisible scar along one cheek, Bit was _very_ difficult to recognize for someone who`d only seen him once or twice. It was doubtful that even his own family would recognize him anymore - though that wasn`t saying much. Assuming they were alive. "You were half-_dead_..."   
  
"I got better. Organoids, I`m guessing, can heal their bondmates."   
  
_ Bound Partners. I **HATE** the phrase 'bondmate,'_ Zeke corrected, though Dana didn`t hear him. The Liger shifted briefly as if cringing at the very mention of the term. _"PC much?"_ Bit complained in reply, easily maintaining the facade that he was paying attention as he did so.   
  
"... Where... Is she taking him, again?" Dana asked unbelievingly.   
  
"Probably home. But... Do you have a family?" He asked quietly. Dana gave only a nod. "It`d be good for you if you went to them right about now and get the _Hell_ away from here. Vega`s in good hands now, probably better than when he was in the hospital, so don`t worry about him."   
  
"What about his crew though?" She finally asked, not to Bit in particular but more to herself. She _did_ need the excuse to see her family again, after all, it wasn`t every day that the apocalypse happened and that made time with her kids seem a _bit_ more important than Vega, who was apparently going to be in perfect health in a matter of hours at most.   
  
"Hell if I know. Let `em make their own decisions, I guess," he offered another shrug. She gave a nod, and promptly left without giving a good-bye. Dana Masterson was weird like that, she wasn`t one to say good-bye and she wasn`t one to knowingly ask for people`s oppinions unless she damn well needed them to do something. In a few seconds, she was gone, and in a few minutes, the Foe Hammer began to lift up from the landing pad, tilting in nearly the same direction that Bit had come from. He guessed they were headed to Romeo City or Farentown, whichever.   
  
"What do we do now?" He asked.   
  
_ I don`t know_, came Zeke`s uncertain answer, and the heaviness from before returned like a collapsing brick wall.   
  
  
"Ready to fire," the tactical officer reported. This time though, Conrad waved a hand dismissively to her, glancing towards one of the others in what amounted to his current war room. "Cease firing. Check if we can see through the smoke."   
  
"Negative," came the automatic reply from the comm officer, who`d obviously been listening to recon units the entire time.   
  
"Damn. Alright, tell the Hermann to shoot through the smoke - energy weapons only, see if we can`t blow a hole into it to see through..."   
  
"Yes, sir," the officer replied, though Conrad wasn`t really paying attention anymore. A part of him knew that it had been an utter waste of effort, but hope still remained to some extent, that diamond had been destroyed by the sheer volume of firepower that had been dumped on it. It had been enough to turn New Helic City into nothing more than a volcanic crater twenty times over, if _that_ didn`t do the job, what would?   
  
He didn`t have the answer.   
  
All he could do now was wait for one, even as a small, venomously evil laugh echoed at the very edge of his perceptions, so subtle that he didn`t even know if he heard it or not, only that he was unnerved for some reason.   
  
It was the laugh of a demon, and the demon`s name was Shadow.   
  


_ End Chapter Ten_  
  


* * *

  
  


**Author`s Note:** Tick... Tock... >D  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Nope, Brad`s not turnin` into a Jedi, just fit the moment to have him say that :P And logic? Me? When it comes to a super weapon? Drugs`re bad, mmkay? >_> Vilhelm may get his ass kicked, he may not, and whoever does it is likely not going to be able to actually **kick his ass**. All bets are off, I`m just waiting for the bodycount to start including significant characters. And I doubt they`re trying to give Death a single target, however courteous that would be, they`re just trying to survive :p  
  
**DJ wolfwood:** The Uglena is very likely the only Blox Zoid that`ll appear in ROC, I just saw a pic of it and it screamed 'POSSIBLE GUNSNIPER REPLACEMENT!!!' Although it may or may not end up being used in that type of role. Like I said, I have another Zoid in mind that ties in closely to a prequel I may write someday. And no, I haven`t gotten to your fic yet - but I`ll try to whenever I can find the time/stamina to read it :P  
  
**Illidan:** I dunno about Henry, given that Rommel controls his supplies... But... Well, I`ll explain that later, in another chapter - if you haven`t figured it out already. Specular isn`t really becoming mellow, per se... He`s just been jolted senseless, partially frozen, knocked unconscious, imprisoned for a week or two, made to force-evolve a Geno Breaker, driven insane, battered, attacked by a friend he knowingly left to die in the heat of the moment, seemingly deserted by another, deprived of just about everything and... And, shit, wouldn`t **YOU** get a **BIT** tired with the majority of all of that happening within the span of _48 hours_, tops?  
  
Well, that`s all for now folks. Hope it wasn`t **too** sudden towards the end, was tired off my ass and too lazy to re-write it :P Zinou`s perfectionist enough about writing for all of us, thankyouverymuch.  
  
Enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	11. Evolution

  
  
**Foreword:** Zoids - Evolution fits several parts of this chapter. Pick your own for everything else.  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
_ Evolution_   
  
  
  
"... No go. The diamond is still standing, damage to it is non-existent and the surrounding area has been reduced to a molten crater," one of the officers exclaimed in a nearly mute tone of voice, disbelief plainly obvious in every word. It was the report that Conrad had been utterly _dreading_ to have to hear. With the combined might of one of the largest task forces that the Republic had put together since the days when wars were as common as backyard baseball games at his disposal, he hadn`t even made a dent in the energy cocoon.   
  
The visual he got through the 'hole' that had been punched into the smoke by the Hermann`s main guns showed that the terrain for close to half a mile or more around the diamond had been turned into liquid glass, staining black and churning with enough heat that it was starting to melt away at the inside of the crater itself, but the diamond remained in place, utterly unmoved, not even tarnished by the unbelievable amount of firepower that had just been dumped all over it.   
  
"Damn," he finally said with defeat, rubbing two fingers along one temple and letting out a long sigh that crossed between despair, frustration and outright disbelief. _Nothing_ was supposed to survive something like what they`d thrown at it, but there it was. Unscathed in every way.   
  
For the first time, though probably not the last, Major Conrad Robertson realized just how horribly unprepared he was in coming into this operation.   
  
And for the first time, though also probably not the last, he spoke with a hint of defeat in his voice.   
  
"Tell everyone to withdraw. We`re heading back to base, unless the General objects..."   
  
There was no reply, muffled chatter filled the room and the Europlas began to turn away, back towards the base.   
  
"Belay that order," the comm officer stated. "General Hauser has just sent an order to hold position," he added.   
  
"Hold position?"   
  
"That`s all, sir. He didn`t bother to clarify, orders?"   
  
A sigh. This was going to be a _long_ night.   
  
"Best be ready to send someone for snacks, Lieutenant. We may be here for a while," he said with a dry tone, leaning his head halfway into one hand and strumming his fingers across the side of his skull.   
  
  
"There`s Romeo," Leyon announced absently, finally feeling the pressure of the quiet leaving the control room as the Empress Heart majestically began to drift down through the clouds, already on course for landing at the city`s main airport, which was probably one of the four largest such facilities on the face of the planet, expanding out for a mile from the main city itself. "Any ideas on what we`re gonna do once we get there?" He asked. While it had basically been planned out from the start that they would be going there specifically to get Leon and the Red Blade Liger, no one was sure how exactly to go about it - or if he`d even be willing to come along for that matter.   
  
"One of us should just go get him."   
  
"Steven."   
  
"What, Leyon?"   
  
"That`s a miles-wide city that`s been hit by bombs and at least one major assault in one night."   
  
"So?"   
  
"Do you honestly expect to find Leon at all in that kind of environment? It`s worse than lookin` for a needle in a haystack..."   
  
"I know where I can find him," Leena tossed in, mainly since she couldn`t stand doing nothing but circling the floor and spouting off potential names for the Uglena. It got a little old after a while.   
  
"Where?" Leyon and Steve both asked.   
  
"Proba-" "_Identify yourself or be destroyed_!"   
  
"Well, so much for casual planning," Sarah mumbled out offhandedly, just trying to preserve the fact that everyone was _speaking_ for once. Several hours of raw silence aside from Tauros` daughter walking around mumbling out two-word name suggestions had begun to grate on her nerves in more ways than one. She also didn`t want to get shot down by any of the six Pteras Zoids that had dropped out of the clouds above and behind the Empress Heart, all of them armed to the death with heavy gattling guns on four and close to a dozen missiles on the other two.   
  
They`d had the sense to fly just close enough to avoid being in the great carrier Zoid`s firing arc while still avoiding the heated, turbulent backwash of it`s engines as well. In all likelihood, the flying fortress had just met it`s match without ever realizing it.   
  
"This is Doctor Leyon Martin, Guylos Imperial citizen by birth, Neutral Zone citizen by choice. Unaffiliated. The Whale King is the Empress Heart, also unaffiliated," he said with a dry, bored calmness that was uniquely out of place.   
  
"Why should we believe you? No records check out on this heap..."   
  
"This _heap_," Leyon began hotly. "Can shoot every last one of you down and then turn the city into a pile of smoking crap. If I was here to attack, I`d`ve done it by now."   
  
"Don`t mind Leyon," Steve cut in, clamping a hand over the pointy headed mad scientist`s mouth and yanking him away from the reciever. "He`s a bit high strung right now... No sleep in five months, caffine addiction, ramen noodle fetish, addicted to hearing the sounds of gunfire going up his Zoid`s ass... But anyway, we`re neutral, we mean no harm and we`re just looking for my son," he explained, even while Leyon flailed around in his desk chair, muffled screams coming from behind Tauros` hand.   
  
"... This is getting repetitive," the pilot grumbled out. "Identify _your_ self then," he ordered, a small alarm light going off just under the main viewscreen, showing that the six Zoids had each armed their weapons and locked on.   
  
"Steven Tauros, and Sarah Obscura and my daughter Leena are also with me. Do I need to explain everything else to ya too?" He asked annoyedly.   
  
No response for several seconds.   
  
"Is your son`s name Leon, by any chance?"   
  
A pause.   
  
"... What`s wrong, is he alright?" Steven asked on the verge of sounding frantic, letting go of Leyon in such a way that the mad scientist spun around on his chair and then fell over onto his side with a muffled crack.   
  
"Owww..."   
  
"No sir, congratulations though. Pick a landing pad nearest the main airport, just avoid any traffic. Good day," the pilot said with a hint of respect, all six Pteras promptly breaking off of their previous attack formation and swooping back up into the clouds without another word, leaving Steven to blankly stare at the screen.   
  
"Why do I have a funny feeling about this?"   
  
"Apparently he did something good," Sarah offered, blandly swiping Leyon`s chair and poking the downed scientist with her right shoe in the process. The doctor twitched vacantly as the high heel prodded into his cheek, but didn`t move aside from groaning and sprawling out on his front.   
  
"It`s not that, I`m just worried he might have gone and gotten himself killed doing it," Leyon explained a bit darkly.   
  
"He`s _still_ alive," Leena cut back in with all the grace and refinement of a rusted, blood covered chainsaw in a B-movie horror flick, the tone of her voice more than telling Steven to shut up about thoughts that her big brother was dead. "And since none of you are being very optimistic about it, _I`ll_ look for him," she exclaimed, taking charge of the situation in a way that terrified both Steven and Leyon and brought an amused - if not well-hidden - smirk to Sarah`s face.   
  
"Yes`m," both men submissively replied, though Leyon`s was still partially muffled by the floor before he finally started to get back up. As for Sarah?   
  
_ "Just like I used to be,"_ she thought, and continued to think, all the way to the landing pad.   
  
  
"Angsty romance novel fodder, yes, but I didn`t expect you two to fall asleep on a bench at the corner of the street," Naomi chided, slamming the roof of the cockpit down after hopping out of her Gustav, stepping down from the base of one of it`s antenna-like hitch-arms and then standing on the sidewalk next to the bench that Pierce and Leon had pretty much monopolized at some point before her arrival.   
  
"We`re not asleep," the green haired woman finally pointed out, opening her eyes and leaning forward from the back of the bench, stretching her legs out.   
  
"Speak for yourself," the sniper retorted, pointing to Leon with one finger. A low snore was the reply he gave, slumped over with his arms dangling down off the bench between his knees. It was a wonder the guy wasn`t drooling all over himself.   
  
"Next time, I will," Pierce commented, re-crossing her legs and leaving her arms draped over the back of the bench while Naomi leaned smoothly against the streetlamp that sat less than three feet away. The Gustav was parked right in front of the three of them. In the middle of the street.   
  
"Isn`t that a bit illegal?" The former Backdraftee questioned in an attempt to stir up conversation.   
  
"I do believe every law in the books was thrown out last night in favor of survival," Naomi answered calmly, reaching into the inside of her trench-styled coat and pulling out a pack of cigarettes, nonchalantly thwacking them into her palm several times. "Want one?" She asked a bit lazily, the limited fatigue beginning to wear on her as much as it was on Pierce, and wasn`t on Leon since he was asleep.   
  
"No thanks," Pierce replied, ignoring the quirked brow that came in question. The building from earlier was still standing, the smoke was now slowing to a halt after however many hours of work on behalf of the locals. Ambulances and police cars were still streaking by at dozens of miles past the speed limit, as well as firetrucks and the occasional Sinker - which was one of the few Zoids considered genuinely streetworthy due to their agility and ability to fly when need-be. The ones in Romeo served as everything from police S.W.A.T. support vehicles to fire engines, but never ambulances. There just wasn`t enough room in them.   
  
"I`d`ve figured a lipstick lesbian biker bitch would be a smoker," Naomi pointed out, intentionally being a bit on the rude side. About the only people she`d ever made friends with without initially conflicting with them were Leon Tauros and Jamie Hameros, the older of the two being too focused and agreeable to have a verbal slugging match with, the younger of the two being too intimidated to be bothered with in such a fashion, though Jamie wasn`t exactly much of a friend, more of an acquaintance.   
  
"I`m not a lipstick lesbian," Pierce grumbled.   
  
"Maybe, but you aren`t fighting about the biker bitch part."   
  
"A biker, yes. But you seem to be more of a bitch than me," she tossed back, too bored to really take any offense.   
  
"I`ll take that as a compliment," Naomi replied, sticking a cigarette in her lips and then lighting up without another word.   
  
  
Stepping down the ramp that was formed from the bottom half of the Empress Heart`s jaw, Leena Tauros was on-foot. It was now the middle of day, or so, she wasn`t using her Gunsniper since it`s throat had literally been torn out - among other things. The Zoid was just unsafe now, it would need another overhaul to get working again, and the Uglena was unfamiliar to her in every way - she only knew how to pilot Dibisons, Gunsnipers and a customized Pteras, after all. None of the other Zoids had been up her alley either, so she`d decided to make the search on foot.   
  
Walking out of the shadow of the Whale King with a purpose, one could almost spot an authority in every step she made, moving with a purpose across the massive airfield that had been left mostly undefended in the scramble to protect the immediate cityscape. By the time she`d made it to the shade of the airport`s abandoned exterior overhang, it struck her that searching an entire city on foot _was_ over the top.   
  
Unfortunately, something else kept her from going back. Pride.   
  
_ "No way. In Hell. Am I going back there,"_ she told herself, determined in the extreme not to make a fool of herself after having effectively taken control. Leena Tauros wasn`t exactly someone known for making was decisions, but by that same note, she wasn`t someone known for backing off without a good reason to.   
  
She`d just have to improvise somehow.   
  
There was a car parked in the lot on the inner-side of the airport, probably the only one left. Most of it`s windows were broken, it was located the entire way across and she didn`t know how to hotwire it, but closer than that was a bike. An ordinary bike, from the looks of things, not a sports model or an offroader, just a street bike.   
  
That represented a problem as well for a simple reason, which Leena herself recalled as she came to a stop in front of it, the sticks impossibly dangling from the hairpiece on the back of her head slumping in the same fashion as her shoulders.   
  
"I don`t know how to ride a bike..." She said with an air of defeat, staring down at the concrete of the sidewalk for several seconds before straightening up and taking a deep breath.   
  
There was a simple reason that she didn`t know how to ride a bycycle though, it just isn`t something many people put at a high level of importance when they`re brought up on a base in the middle of the desert, spending the majority of their free time learning how to pilot and maintain a select few Zoids. While the average little girl would learn how to ride a bike and immediately flock to one that was pink and had ribbons dangling from the handlebars(among other things), Leena Tauros had learned how to pilot a gigantic green-black-and-gray Dibison and immediately flocked to blowing things up.   
  
"I can do this. Damn it," she stated matter-of-factly, swiping the bike off the rack after making sure it wasn`t chained into place. She had to doubt anyone would give a damn anyway, the end of life as everyone on the planet had known it was enough to make anyone forget the tiny matter of a bike. The rider had probably only used it to get to the airport, then hopped on a Hammerhead or some other transport Zoid and flown off to some percieved safe place.   
  
They wouldn`t mind if she borrowed it. Really.   
  
_ "Let`s see now..."   
  
_ One leg over the seat. Then she half-sat, propped on one leg, the other foot on a pedal. Hands on the handlebars, but not tightly enough that her knuckles would turn white or anything like that. As an afterthought, she felt around the back of the seat for something to lower it with. The thing was purely uncomfortable regardless, nowhere near as accomodating as the cockpit of a Zoid.   
  
She lifted her foot from the ground and pressed the pedal, precariously balanced for several seconds before the mixture of under and overconfidence kicked in, with the under taking the lead for the time being as both feet shot to the ground to hold herself in place. A nervous sigh, she shifted her eyes in either direction to make sure that no one was watching.   
  
The airport was almost a ghost town. There weren`t even any looters in sight, just a few rats running along in the parking lot.   
  
Again with the nervousness, she lifted one foot, the one that had been balancing her the first time, and put it on a pedal, starting again by pushing down. This time she kept her balance, long enough to pull her other foot up and apply it to a pedal as well, briefly swerving before straightening out and slipping down into the parking lot itself through one of the sloped spots in front of the main entrance that usually served for convenience when dragging along a suitcase on wheels.   
  
As with before though, she started losing her balance and putting too much thought into things, making it as far out as the middle of the parking lot before uselessly stopping and planting both feet down. She didn`t have to, really, but that mixture of feelings forced it.   
  
This time, the sigh that came out was one of annoyed determination.   
  
_ "I`m wasting my time on this thing,"_ she thought to herself, glaring at the buildings that formed the abandoned 'buffer' ring around the city itself. _"I`d probably be better off trying to jack the car..."_   
  
She stopped short of finishing the thought, deciding to give it one more try. After all, the third time was usually the charm, right?   
  
Again, she placed her weight on the seat, and again, she put one foot on a pedal. A pause and she collected her breath, concentrating on _not_ concentrating too hard this time. A blink, another breath and then she pressed down on the pedal, doing so a second time with her other foot, rigidly holding her balance before relaxing a bit. This time though, she succeeded.   
  
It took her three tries in a row but at the age of fifteen, Leena Tauros was finally riding a bike. She wasn`t doing so with confidence, for a little while, but she managed, going slowly at first before finding the resolve to go faster. Then faster after that, until she hit the contraption`s limit and found that she had the urge to grin like a lunatic and chant out her greatness to anything in sight.   
  
But she didn`t.   
  
_ "I still have a job to do,"_ she reminded herself sternly, standing on the pedals but never slowing down. Still, though, there was an ecstatic feeling tugging at the edge of her senses as she pulled past the first three rows of buildings and into the populated interior of the city, though she was still smiling the entire way in. In the process of doing so, though, another missing piece of her confidence had come back. It was still a long way to the top, but she would make it there - with time.   
  
  
"Looks like they`ve stopped," Bit commented, uneasily listening for another blast of gunfire - even though it would temporarily deafen him in the process. The Liger rumbled with an equal uneasiness, though Zeke himself said nothing for the time being, leaving Bit to make his own conclusions. "I wonder if they actually pulled it off," he mused, only to feel emotions that equated to a big fat 'no' from the Organoid that had previously kept silent.   
  
_ They failed miserably. Shadow still lives, he and the Geno Saurer aren`t even hurt.   
  
_ "Is it even the Geno Saurer anymore?" Bit asked, knowing that the other Zoid was undergoing a similar transformation to one that Fiona had once told him about.   
  
** [**_"What happened then?" A far younger Bit Cloud asked, dressed in a set of Blade Liger pajamas and looking riveted.   
  
"Well..." A pause. Fiona briefly looked a little confused and a little upset, but quickly finished the story. To an extent.   
  
"The Geno Saurer evolved into a Geno Breaker."   
  
"And then what?"   
  
"That`s another story for when you`re older," she said knowingly, leaving out the part about how Raven, Shadow and the Breaker had single handedly slaughtered one of the most impressive ground armies ever assembled._**]**   
  
_ No. Not even close.   
  
_ "Is it skipping ahead to a Fury?" He asked, glancing up sideways at his enormous companion. He had never been told about the paths of Zoid evolution, but he had an idea of it all. Shield Liger, Blade Liger, Liger Zero. Geno Saurer, Geno Breaker, Fury. It seemed rather cut and dry really.   
  
_ I fear that Shadow is going beyond even that. Kale`s own influences in the matter are going to effect it as well...   
  
_ Zeke trailed off and Bit grimaced to himself, privately wondering if it was even worth sticking around when all that was left to take place was a massacre that hadn`t even started yet.   
  
He`d looked into the mirror before. He`d fought the devil incarnate and found out that it was nothing other than himself. He only had scant memories of his own mass murder of at least a hundred-and-fifty people during the previous night`s chaos, and it wasn`t something he wanted to see again - from any side of the action.   
  
Bit Cloud wanted to leave. He wanted to haul out of the base, find a little corner in the middle of nowhere and beat his head against a rock until he stopped having the urge to ruthlessly kill everything in sight. He _didn`t_ want to stick around just to watch someone else carry out _his_ desires to slaughter everyone and everything. Whether that was from envy or disgust, he truly didn`t know.   
  
That disturbed him even more than everything else had.   
  
  
"Hnnn..."   
  
** This is unsettling. To an extent.   
  
** "Agreed."   
  
Quiet. Both the Guardian and the Ancient shifted their gaze from the turmoil that was consuming Three to the bloody carnage that was just waiting to explode like a firecracker in a glass jar.   
  
"Shadow`s gotten stronger," Madison mused. "The last time I saw him, he wouldn`t have been able to do this type of thing with a Rev Raptor."   
  
** I am more concerned as to how much of the power actually changing the Geno Saurer is Shadow`s, and how much is Kale`s...   
  
** "... Yes," she agreed, her usual blandness remaining completely intact as she gave a nod to the Organoid that she was still standing on. "This could prove bad for the people of Zi."   
  
** Indeed. It has the same potential for destruction as the people blindly serving Vilhelm Rommel.   
  
** "Are you sure?"   
  
** Yes.   
  
** At this, Madison finally grimaced. Not for her own sake of course, she was one of those rare people who could look death in the face and just shrug at it boredly. She was grimacing more for Roc. If anything had become powerful enough to worry the First Born, then he would likely want to intervene as quickly as possible. She would probably have to play the role of preventing him from getting himself killed if she was right.   
  
"Can you gauge his power?" She finally asked, though it wasn`t really needed. Bound links ran like a two way street, after all.   
  
** ... You do not want to know.   
  
** "I`ll take your word for it," she answered, idly gripping the hilt of her club a bit tighter for no real reason at all.   
  
  
"What in the _Hell_?"   
  
He vaguely registered the words, almost finished processing them before a resounding ***THWACK*** echoed across the back of his head.   
  
"**_WAKE UP!!!_**"   
  
*Thud.*   
  
Concrete. Yes, it was concrete. It had to be concrete because it was grainy and porous, and it was probably wet concrete too, because it didn`t feel dry at all. Yeah. It was wet. He also had the feel of asphalt grinding briefly against the base of his scalp.   
  
"I _think_ you hit him too hard..." One voice commented.   
  
"Be smart and stay out of it..." Another voice warned.   
  
"Do I need to hit you again?!" A third voice demanded.   
  
Well, this was all fine and dandy, he barely recognized the first two voices but the third - and the smack that had hit him across the back of the head - were distinctly familiar. Now who did he know who hit and screamed like that...   
  
Naomi? No, her voice was smooth even when she was screaming her lungs out, plus she was usually too laid back to go ranting and raving all the time...   
  
Pierce was just about the same. Possibly the reason why she and Naomi had seemingly developed an instant dislike for each other was how different and alike they were at the same time.   
  
There was Abbie but no, the hand was a bit too big. She was too small and tended to use frying pans when she had to hit someone to get their attention. Plus she tended to hit far harder than that, he`d clocked her arm at something like 150 miles per hour when a drunkard had hit on her as she was leaving the diner once.   
  
Who else was there...   
  
His groggy mind absently dredged up an old memory for the answer.   
  
** [**_"**WAKE UP YOU SLOB!!!**"  
  
"**ACK!**" Screamed a thirteen year old Leon Tauros, literally flying off the couch and crashing through the coffee table with enough force to leave a body imprint in the carpet. One that would stay visible for another four years._**]**   
  
"Ohhh..."   
  
Tick. Twitch. _Inhale_.   
  
Pierce and Naomi both inched back accordingly.   
  
Yes, he thought he knew now.   
  
That meant all bets were off. Oy...   
  
"**_WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT FOR?!_**" He screamed, springing back up from the concrete in an actual blur and completely _shattering_ his normally serious front with such force that both of the nearby women were left slack jawed.   
  
"**_YOU WERE SLEEPING ON A CITY-BENCH, YA DOPE!!!_**" Came the reply in that loving manner that only an irate sister could give.   
  
"**_YOU DIDN`T HAVE TO SMACK ME UPSIDE THE HEAD!_**" He shot back in an equally warm, fuzzy kind of way that just screamed 'I`m going to kill you because _I love ya_, Sis!'   
  
"**_WELL NYEH!_**" Leena finally let loose, pulling down one eyelid, sticking out her tongue and flipping him the bird all at once.   
  
"_Why **you LITTLE**_..."   
  
He stopped himself short of causing a typical dustcloud of violence that came with a Tauros-sibling spat, finally realizing just where he was and just what had happened, and with those two facts - just _who_ had seen it.   
  
"Ahhhh _crap_."   
  
The result was a few thinly muffled snickers that reached his ears. He responded in kind with a groan, straightened up and then counted to ten. Leon then promptly swiped his hand over his face, let out a muffled sigh and hung his head.   
  
"And people wonder why I moved into the HoverCargo at sixteen," he said, having completely facefaulted out of his wits.   
  
"They`re brother and sister alright," Naomi said, barely able to keep from falling over and howling with laughter. Pierce was too busy snickering and snorting like an utter, raving lunatic to bother with a reply.   
  
"Hmph," Leena sounded before continuing. "_Dad_ told me to come and get you," she half-lied. Leon saw right through it, but chose to avoid bringing it up, instead shifting back to his more mature, usual self, though his tongue had seemingly planted itself into his cheek.   
  
"How _nice_ of him," he growled out, switching the subject finally and making note of the fact that his currently-annoying-as-sin younger sister was dragging along a bike. "You finally learned to ride?"   
  
"Yeah. Unlike you."   
  
Tick. Twitch. Inhale. Count to ten. Calm.   
  
"That`s... Nice... Leena. Where`s Dad at and can he wait long enough for my to get my Zoid?"   
  
"What happened to your Liger?"   
  
"I met Bit`s quasi-evil clone in a Geno Breaker and got my ass kicked. Simple enough for you?"   
  
"Bill Chapman?"   
  
"You know him?"   
  
"About him, yeah," she answered, blissfully allowing both of them to completely shut out Pierce and Naomi, who were still giggling, snickering and grinning like idiots. A crack had been formed in Leon Tauros` armor of seriousness, now all they had to do was figure out how to expand it...   
  
"You can tell me on the way to pick it up. Hope you don`t mind having to go slowly," he exclaimed, giving Leena more than enough of a hint that they were going to be going alone. _Without_ Pierce and Naomi. At that, the older of the two siblings started walking off, obviously annoyed by the fact that he was speed walking around the corner of the street.   
  
Leena just stared blandly for a moment and then glanced over at the other two. "Wanna come?" She asked, the epitomy of the innocent younger sister, her choice of clothing and the thick glasses she wore practically emphasising cuteness despite the somewhat-grizzly look of the scars that could be seen on her hands and face.   
  
"No! They don`t! Now come on, damn it!" Leon sounded from around the corner.   
  
Almost with a sadistic slowness, Pierce and Naomi shared a sideways glance. While it was true that this was all completely out of their usual character, the fact that Leon had finally cracked and blown up at _something_ was just too good an opportunity to pass up.   
  
  
Early evening now. The relative calm and quiet that had settled Garnhelm Base was almost unnerving in comparison to the rash of activity that had permeated the past day or so. What had been a full scale mobilization had turned into what basically amounted to a duck hunt where the duck happened to have six foot long claws and an atomic suicide bomb and all the hunters were armed with was a BB gun while sitting out in the open.   
  
For Bit Cloud, this early evening calm was even more upsetting than the firing that had repeatedly rendered him temporarily deaf, while the lack of people was both an eerie comfort and an ordinary annoyance. It was annoying because he had no one to talk to other than Zeke - and Zeke wasn`t being much of a conversationalist tonight. _That_ was upsetting too, Zeke`s usual craving for freedom wasn`t even apparent to him anymore.   
  
As for the eerie comfort?   
  
While he didn`t have anyone to talk to, he also didn`t have anyone to think about disemboweling with the nearest sharp object, namely the Handleblade.   
  
At present, Bit was sitting a bit ponderously atop the the 'popup' barrier walls that surrounded Garnhelm`s outer perimeter, which were also the only walls that both a: Weren`t electrified, and b: Weren`t topped off with barbed wire. The seating was uncomfortable for him, but it was also the least of his worries. He had been thinking. A lot. Considering, contemplating, trying to find a distraction, _almost_ asking to be put out on the front lines since he had a Zoid and was already wearing a uniform - however 'borrowed' it had been.   
  
Bit Cloud didn`t like thinking. He liked doing. Thinking - no surprise there - required thought. Bit didn`t want to think he right now, he wanted to do something, but all he could do was sit there and think, which basically defeated the purpose of wanting to do something to _avoid_ thinking in the first place, which made everything become a little more annoying in the process.   
  
And all that he could think about was the same types of things that made him not like thinking in the first place.   
  
What was the state of the Blitz Team? Was the Doc okay? Was Jamie still ripping himself apart? Had Leena stopped moping around without being egomaniacal? Was Brad still the picture of the apathetic bastard who had a heart of gold - assuming he hadn`t sold it for some reason? And what about the Fluegel Team? Was Naomi alright? Was Leon okay?   
  
Hell, Bit really never thought of them as friends. Friends made you think. Thinking was bad. Doing was good. Bit saw them all solely as distant acquaintances, the only ones he really got along with to any great degree were Brad, Steven, Leon and Jamie. Brad because he didn`t ask questions and he didn` t go half-insane whenever Bit made a screw-up, nor did he ever waste time bragging. Bit didn`t like it when people bragged, he didn`t like it when they tried to hype his skills either.   
  
Steven was someone Bit liked to a mixed degree. He despised the man`s greed, but at the same time envied his intelligence. He pitied how many cares that Tauros actually had but he had to applaud how well he hid them by putting on an almost mirror front to the one that he probably would`ve developed if he had actually stopped to think at any time during the past two years.   
  
Leon was someone he had mixed feelings about to, mainly since Leon had instantly befriended him and given him respect where most people would`ve just mocked the fact that he was supposedly a complete airhead - and this was after tripping the guy`s Shield Liger and handing him a concussion, a broken foot with an ankle to match and a broken arm to go with it. That was enough to make Bit like him from the start, but he didn`t like how intense Leon had become through the past months since they`d first met. He needed to slow down or he`d burn out.   
  
That reminded the blonde that _he_ needed to slow down and relax again or _he_ would burn out as well.   
  
Jamie was someone Bit liked just because Jamie took pride and enjoyment out of his work and held up admirably despite having a second personality. The experience had jarred the teen considerably but he had held his head up through it, not out of spite - at least Bit didn`t think so - but more out of determination. Jamie also loved his Zoid, in a way that translated as more than 'Look at all the guns! Hehehehehehe!'   
  
In short, there were four people that Bit truly had any real like for and even then he viewed them only as acquaintances. After that came the other three. _They_ were the ones that Bit felt the strongest about.   
  
First there was Vega. Vega was like Bit had been when he was younger. Just smarter. And better cared for. And even _less_ social. That`s why Bit had adopted him as a surrogate little brother, even if Vega was just trying to use him to replace Kale. Kale was another person Bit felt strongly for, not out of like, but out of sheer contempt. If there was any living being on _all_ of Zi, at any singular point in history that Bit wanted to murder in cold blood - regardless of his mindset - it was Kale. That spoke volumes enough.   
  
Then, finally, there was Bill. Bill had been Bit in reverse as far as appearance went. The styles of their clothes were virtually the same aside from color, they looked exactly like each other aside from hair and eye color and they were both Royal Cup Champions with Organoids and Zoids that supposedly no one could beat. They were perfectly matched in combat, even when it came to fists, and they were easily equal everywhere else. Bit would even venture to guess that Bill had probably left his family in roughly the same way that he had, but that was another story.   
  
Right now, most of his thoughts were focused on these people and others. Which made him hold them in partial contempt because he _didn`t like thinking_.   
  
"Hey! You!"   
  
A voice stirred him somewhat, thankfully terminating the freight train of thought he had been embedded in, and causing him to jerk upright ever so slightly. He didn`t turn to face whoever had called him though, thoughtlessly regarding the glow of the moons upon the firing lines of Zoids that had gathered off in the distance.   
  
"_What_?"   
  
Odd. He didn`t remember sounding that vindictive before. Somewhere in his jumbled, confused mess of a mind, he supposed that he was in need of sleep - though he doubted greatly that he would get that well deserved rest. He probably needed to eat sometime soon as well, but the cafeteria was probably closed by now, knowing his recent run of luck.   
  
"Where can I find Kale Obscura`s cell?" The voice asked, and Bit only vacantly noted the tingle of rigidness at it`s edge after a few seconds. Whoever was behind him was either intimidated or unflenching - not that he particularly _cared_ either way, but still.   
  
"Main building, underground, hall one, cell thirteen," he answered coldly, absently noting again that his voice still sounded vindictive, poisonous. However his intrusive visitor had taken the answer, he didn`t bother to find out. Liger didn`t even growl, merely maintaining what seemed a silent vigil near it`s pilot, having helped him up to the top of the wall in the first place close to an hour ago. The man - at least he _thought_ it was a man, his immediate short term memory was fried for some reason, to such an extent that he barely even remembered the answer he had just given - left by the time that the blonde let out a sigh and resumed thinking.   
  
Bit Cloud hated thinking.   
  
He hated it with an ever-growing passion.   
  
But there was nothing he could do to stop it, it seemed.   
  
  
"So, what are you and Dad doing here?" Leon asked casually, still hellbent on ignoring the fact that Pierce and Naomi had just _happened_ to wander along - not to mention ignoring that they`d been right in claiming that he`d need the Gustav to haul his busted-up Red Blade Liger over to the Whale King. He was also ignoring the fact that Leena had openly agreed with them both. Currently, he and his sister were both standing on a catwalk overlooking a repair machine that was finishing up one of it`s cycles before the Liger could be loaded onto the Gustav.   
  
He was also ignoring Pierce and Naomi, who were standing fairly close by, occasionally popping off inside jokes that only people who either knew or thought they knew one or both of the Tauros siblings would understand.   
  
"Leyon heard that Bit`s at a base on a straight line from here, and the last time you called, you said you and Naomi would be coming here for an overhaul on the Gustav," Leena explained simply, one hand on the railing as she glanced down at the Red Blade Liger with a hint of unease. Bit and the Schneider hadn`t even done that sort of damage to the once-majestic Blade Liger, which still bore some sort of hidden royalty even in it`s brutalized state. "Pretty simple choice, really."   
  
"And why did you come along alone?"   
  
Tick. Twitch. Inhale. This time, Leena was the one who looked half-insane.   
  
"Dad. Leyon. Sarah. Hours of endless. Freaking. Quiet."   
  
Tick. Twitch.   
  
A sagely nod and Leon glanced down at his Zoid. "Yeah, that probably _would_ be annoying. How`s Dad, anyway? Haven`t seen him since he and Leyon tried to kill each other..."   
  
"He`s still as crazy as ever. Mostly healed up but he still walks kinda stiffly though," Leena answered with the same casual tone, which abruptly became a good bit more serious. "I still can`t believe _any_ of this happened," she admitted. Again, Leon gave a nod, but didn`t speak. He knew better than to say anything less than three seconds after Leena said something, unless it was question. Otherwise she`d likely take his head off and fling his brain at a random passer-by. His sister may have toned down significantly but she was still a stick of dynamite when she wanted to be.   
  
"I keep expecting to wake up in bed and go out to the mall with Bit and Brad to meet you and Naomi and shop my head off..."   
  
"I get what you mean," the older Tauros commented. A pause. No one spoke, not even Pierce and Naomi.   
  
"How many people do you think can fit onto a Type III Whale King?" Leena asked curiously, something very odd and quite out of place appearing in her voice. None of the others could quite piece together just what it was, but Leon at least knew the answer.   
  
"Probably..." He paused, doing the math in his head. "700 to 2,500 comfortably, depending on the trip. Why?"   
  
"How many civilians do you think need to be evacuated?" Leena asked, that odd... Thing appearing in her voice again.   
  
"Probably too many to do what you`re thinking," Leon replied knowingly, a somber expression on his face.   
  
"Okay... Movable wounded, women and children only, what about that?"   
  
"I`d guess... 7,000 on an unloaded Type III, not very comfortably but they`d probably fit."   
  
"Take into account the addition of the HoverCargo and... Nine Zoids," Leena ordered after a few seconds.   
  
"What am I? Your human calculator?"   
  
"Yeah, pretty much."   
  
"6,800, 6,950 if we cram people onto the HoverCargo, 6,990 if we cram people onto the HoverCargo and under any Zoids with space beneath their main bodies."   
  
"Good. Hope you don`t mind overseeing a light evacuation," Leena stated with authority, and it was at about that moment that Naomi finally managed to identify just _what_ was changed about her voice during those few sentences. It hadn`t been there before, it probably wouldn`t be there again, but for a short while, Leena Tauros had shown compassion and a willingness to use that dominating personality for something constructive.   
  
That pretty much made Naomi`s day right off the bat. Her night too. Pierce and Leon were both still clueless, but the sniper somehow figured they`d guess it eventually if Leena showed it again.   
  
  
It was disturbingly silent in the hall of cells, after the two guards were frozen in place where they`d been standing, each halted in mid-blink. They didn`t hear the door open, they didn`t do anything other than breathe in perfect synch with one another, standing to either side of the only occupied cell in the entire hallway.   
  
For a moment, the figure at the door paused in curiosity. No intimidation, no fear, just curiosity. And then a voice rang out as the door clumsily slammed shut with no one pushing it.   
  
"I was wondering whether or not you`d ever show up."   
  
"Getting in with the wrong crowd, being hunted by a renegade sports company gone terribly awry and getting shot out of the sky twice in a row by the same person tends to delay someone," Rayth said without a hint of remorse or apology, just the same cold tone as a block of ice in a pool of liquid nitrogen. "Behind bars as usual, I see."   
  
"Depends on the bars, _pal_," Kale answered mockingly, not once moving from where he was seated in his prison cell, not even bothering to look up when Rayth came to stand in front of the bars. "Come to finish the job, old _friend_?"   
  
"Kill you, you mean?" Rayth said perceptively, finally causing the other to look up and meet him eye to eye, even if they _were_ seperated by bars that were proven to be resistant to just about any kind of damage. They looked eerily different, they always had, to an extent, but now it showed even more. Kale`s psychotically calm smile was offset by Rayth`s all-business look of neutrality. Their eyes were even tinted similar shades of different colors, Rayth`s dark green eyes contrasting sharply against the equally dark brown rings set around Kale`s black hole-like pupils.   
  
Even their height and build was different. Kale was taller, lankier and pale, Rayth was a bit on the short side at 5'9", somewhat stocky in build and had a tan that offset his vague resemblance to Karl Schubaltz. Their clothes were different as well, Rayth had apparently 'borrowed' the uniform of a private, the nametag read as 'Pvt. Harold Kaughman,' and there was a faint, barely visible inkling of liquid red still apparent on the gray-red collar of the shirt. Kale, on the other hand, wore only a brightly colored blue prison uniform - blue stood out more than orange or black and white against the background of the desert.   
  
"If that`s what you assume," Kale answered again, even his voice contrasting sharply with Rayth`s own. One was a mixture of emotions that held nothing but an underlying sense of impending death and destruction, the other was the smoothly calmed voice of someone who`d let military-_like_ training go to his head at an early age.   
  
"I doubt I could kill you if I wanted."   
  
"You`re right. You couldn`t."   
  
"I guessed as much. I came to break you out of this place."   
  
"I`d say 'thanks,' but there`s a _reason_ I haven`t tried escaping on my own as it is."   
  
"It has something to do with the diamond, I`m guessing," Rayth stated rather than questioned. Questions weren`t something the two of them really threw at each other.   
  
"If I told you, I`d have to kill you."   
  
"You probably would anyway," Rayth shrugged nonchalantly.   
  
"Right again, old chap. Going for a new record, huh?"   
  
No laugh.   
  
"Oh, that`s right... I forgot that you have no _fucking_ sense of humor."   
  
"Death stopped being funny after Al and Randy died," Rayth shrugged again, getting out a looped-style ring with a few dozen keys on it and seeming to count along to number thirteen.   
  
"I`d rather you not let me out just yet."   
  
"Hm?"   
  
A pause while Kale waited to answer, standing up this time and walking forward to the bars, pressed and leaned against them at once, his hands vanishing from Rayth`s sight behind either of the frozen guards.   
  
"Wait until tomorrow afternoon."   
  
A hushed whisper edged at Rayth`s senses. He had no Zoidian blood, but he was still someone naturally adept at 'hearing things.' A latent psychic, in fact, just like Alfred Torson and Randal Clark had been. That was another part of the Five Kings project that hadn`t been recorded - all five of the subjects involved had been at least latent telepaths.   
  
"The start of sundown," the shorter of the two finished, glancing up the remaining three inches to meet Kale`s eyes, intentionally finishing the other`s sentence for him.   
  
"Perceptive as ever," Kale said, stepping back and turning away before turning around again and plopping onto the bed, arms behind his head and legs gingerly, almost lazily crossed at the knee. Most people would have been ready to go into hysterics by then, Obscura`s _presence_ alone had enough force behind it to terrify most ordinary people into screaming for their parents. He could`ve put the fear of god into an athiest just by saying hello with a smile.   
  
Rayth Takahori was not like most people. He wasn`t athiest and he wasn`t religious, he just didn`t care. Kale`s presence didn`t terrify him in the least, which made him a cut above just about everyone that had ever met either of them and lived to tell about it.   
  
"You can leave now. I`d like to eat soon, they`re serving up this really nice mushy slop that _almost_ tastes like mashed potatoes and gravy, along with a helping of something that vaguely resembles fried chicken!" Kale stated with enthusiasm so fake that it sounded genuine.   
  
"I will after one question."   
  
"It`s name is Shadow," the taller of the two answered pre-emptively, knowing the question before it had ever even been asked in the first place. "And yes, it`s what shut the door."   
  
"Thought so," Rayth said without the slightest _hint_ of disbelief or fright.   
  
With that, Takahori turned and left, and the guards unfroze and no one noticed that anything had happened other than Kale, and he certainly wasn`t saying a thing.   
  
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
It grew.   
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
Whisps of energy flittered up and about, trailing circles around the ominous looking diamond of energy, five at a time, going a few inches quicker with every journey. The ground around it had cooled down by now, forming a glass half-shell around the base of the diamond itself, which was balanced impossibly at an angle on one tip, most of it`s lower half vanishing out of sight in the glass, which itself was black, yet glowed a deadly, distorted crimson.   
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
It grew.   
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
No one dared to venture past the very edge of the portion of the glass that had formerly been the edge of a crater, though it now looked more like the cereal bowl from Hell at this point. The sound kept playing itself out, becoming quicker with every single heartbeat, yet only a few could hear the sound, and only three of them were actually paying attention to it. Ominous. Foreboding.   
  
Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.   
  
It evolved.   
  
Death was in the air as a demon`s grim laugh turned the twin moons of Planet Zi a dulled shade of red and orange for the second night in a row. It was an impossibly ill omen of the bloodshed to come.   
  


_ End Chapter Eleven_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Ahhh! Leena actually developing! Ahhh! Rayth still hasn`t died! Ahhh! Leon showed off the fact that he really **IS** a Tauros!  
  
**Illidan:** Bit will start doing things soon. Whether or not it`s of the villainous kind, I`ll let the readers be the judge. Speaking of mind-fucking the readers about who`s good and who`s evil, I gotta focus some on Jamie, Brad and Leyla soon... *nods to self.*  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Thanks and I`ll do my best to do just that :D I also highly suggest reading some of Zinou`s work, it`s better, IMO >_>;  
  
**Other Author`s Note:** As an aside, I may pause work on ROC for a bit to work on a prequel to New Age and Reign of Chaos centered on Thomas. It`s starting to scream at me to be done... And it may end up being a songfic o_O; *Hmm...*  
  
That`s all for now folks, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	12. Melodies of Terror

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick something foreboding for this one, and chaotic-to-high-hell for the end of the chapter, you`re gonna freaking need it...  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Melodies of Terror   
  


  
  
"Sir!" The comm officer shouted, effectively snapping Conrad out of the light sleep he`d allowed himself to fall into. Awake for fifty-two hours straight, it was obviously wearing on him just as much as more than half of the others on the firing lines. He hadn`t eaten and he`d only been able to swipe a one hour long, utterly restless catnap, which had just been snapped in two by the shout that had woken him up. Unlike the ordinary person though, Conrad was wide awake from the get-go, sleep deprivation be damned.   
  
"What?" He asked, lacking completely on any form of military etiquette for the time being. No one else seemed to mind one bit since at least five of the eight people on the Europlas were in the same condition or close to it.   
  
"Orders from the General," the officer stated.   
  
"Shoot," he said, again neglecting military etiquette and not really caring either way.   
  
"Morgan said that firing is to resume the moment that the cocoon starts breaking."   
  
"Breaking?"   
  
"Apparently someone did a little research," the officer said with a tired shrug of his own. The air in the command room was essentially casual intensity, no one was really paying much attention to following protocol to the letter and no one really cared enough to bother with it in the first place. "When that thing starts breaking, it`ll be vulnerable."   
  
"Any idea on when that`ll be?" Conrad asked tiredly, rubbing one of his temples again. It wasn`t much of a habit, or anything else, he just had a headache. Exhaustion tended to do that to you.   
  
"Negative. Hauser only said that it`d be sometime tomorrow and that they can`t pinpoint anything else yet," the officer replied in kind, stopping short of a yawn.   
  
"Put out the word to the troops then, any Zoid with a multiple-pilot crew can allow everyone but one guy to sleep while we wait, any Zoid with only one pilot will have to let the Zoid next to it play night watchman for a bit, but I want at _least_ half the force ready to go at all times, understood?"   
  
"Relaying those orders now."   
  
A nod. Quiet.   
  
Conrad almost fell asleep a few seconds later. Again.   
  
  
"Yanno..."   
  
No answer. Moonlight still lit up the sands of the desert, though it was somewhat outshined by the lighting of the base itself. It was like sitting at the edge of Wind Colony city limits all over over again, with Larry drunk off his wits nearby, smoking a cigarette and mumbling about wanting to spraypaint profanity all over the side of the local chapel. Bit`s _ex_-girlfriend would be curled up next to him mumbling sweet nothings into his ear, and he`d mumble back in similar fashion and Tanya would be passed out on the hood of her new car, not from alchohol or drugs - Larry had always been the only one to dabble in _that_ sort of thing - but from exhaustion. She`d always been the most work addicted member of the Cloud siblings.   
  
The differences were that there weren`t any windmills, the air was dry and bland, unmoving, rather different from the temperate, enjoyable climate around the Wind Colony. The other primary difference was that the Wind Colony hadn`t been a military establishment. The police were the typical small town variety trying to adapt to a recent boom of expansion, there were occasional members of the Guardian Force passing through for whatever reason, sometimes a few Zoid Warriors would pop by but that was all so different from what it was like now.   
  
It seemed a lifetime ago. At most, it had been three or four years since the last time that Bit had sat around like that.   
  
"I hate angst," he concluded, laying on his back and staring straight up into the cloudless sky. At least it was cloudless where he was looking, smoke was _still_ billowing up from around the glassed over crater that had been formed earlier in the day. His hands tucked under the messily short blonde hair on the back of his head, his eyes wandering at random. There was at least one improvement he`d come to enjoy, somewhat, through his years of being a junk dealer and months as a Zoid Warrior with the Blitz Team. In the Wind Colony, the skies were always cloudy at night unless it was during the very hottest part of a summer drought. You couldn`t really gaze at the stars without seeing clouds in the Wind Colony.   
  
He liked the stars. Made for a nice nightlight to sleep by when he was junk dealing, made for an even better distraction when he was on the road with the Blitz Team.   
  
"I also hate how quiet you`re being," he grumbled out as an afterthought, not caring if anyone else heard him.   
  
_ I don`t feel like talking, Bit. Deal with it.   
  
_ "Oh gee, I guess it finally hit you too, huh?" He asked annoyedly, referencing an unpleasant event that _neither_ wanted to speak about.   
  
_ You didn`t know her like I did. Don`t think I haven`t been grieving her death since this whole mess started.   
  
_ "Sure you have," Bit muttered, leaving it at that and shifting his gaze from the heavens to the desert, namely to the lines of Zoids that were still visible in the distance, Whale Kings, Hammerheads and other aircraft still hovering over them all. He wanted to spitefully call them all idiots, but he didn`t bother wasting the effort. They hadn`t listened to him before, he didn`t think they would again.   
  
_ Unlike you, I didn`t vent my frustrations slaughtering people.   
  
_ Silence.   
  
Bit replied only with a harsh sideways glare, and the Liger took a step back, bowing it`s head in apology for the Organoid`s words. The two may have been one, but the Liger Zero didn`t always agree with what Zeke said, after all. And a few seconds after, the enormity of the mistake in his own words struck the same Organoid across the head like a shovel, instantly filling the somewhat distancing emotional Bond between himself and Bit with even more regret than there`d already been.   
  
He would have apologized but...   
  
"Don`t bother."   
  
Too little, too late. Regret withdrew, the presence in his thoughts briefly 'tilted' away and then went completely silent. It was still there, but nowhere near as much as it had been before. Bit huffed with annoyance and looked back at the Republican Zoids, disgust evident on his face as he spoke out and closed his eyes.   
  
"Like ducks in a row."   
  
And with that, he willed himself to lose focus and eventually drifted off to sleep.   
  
  
"So, you`re leaving then?"   
  
"Pretty much," Pierce stated with a slight shrug, standing with the Tauros siblings not far from where Naomi Fluegel was loading the Gustav, the Gunsniper and the Red Blade Liger all into the Empress Heart. "Nothing for me here and I`m worried half-to-death about Abbie and Mark. Mom may be able to hang low for a while but those two`re like sitting ducks in broad daylight most of the time," she added as an afterthought. Disowned or not, she still cared quite a bit about her younger sister.   
  
"Tell Abbie and Beck, I said hi, then," Leon stated more than requested, watching his banged up Zoid getting dragged into the Whale King with a mixed look on his face. The teasing had stopped thankfully, Leena was just being quiet since good-byes didn`t interest her too much and she didn`t know Pierce too well at all. The old Leena Tauros would`ve butted into the conversation and joyously forced herself into it`s center, this one didn`t like attention too much anymore.   
  
"One thing though..."   
  
"Hmm?" Pierce voiced, looking half-ready to turn and walk away.   
  
"What about your Storm Sworder?"   
  
"Ciere Fuma used to live here on her time off from the Backdraft. She owned a Gustav, it`s still in her private garage and that wasn`t blown to Hell like most in the city, so I`ll use that."   
  
Leon gave a nod. "So long then," he said.   
  
A pause. Silence.   
  
Leena vacantly scratched the inside of a wrist, listening to the distinct sound that happens whenever someone not used to much social contact gets caught completely off guard by something, in this case, the sound of lips meeting skin, and the sound of Leon`s spine going so rigid that she faintly registered a cracking sound.   
  
"See ya, Leon," Pierce`s voice rang out with a hint of flirtatiousness in it, and Leena could almost swear she saw her brother turn six shades of red, pink and maybe a bit of orange on the side. By the time that the green haired woman had left, he still hadn`t blinked and his expression was frozen in a look that bordered on shock and awe at once.   
  
"Well, that was special, huh?" She quipped, waving a half goodbye in Summers` general direction and then sparing another glance Leon`s way. "Might wanna get that lipstick smudge off your cheek before Naomi see`s it," she added with an utterly casual tone of voice.   
  
"She`s gonna have a field day with this one," Leon finally mumbled out, reaching up and wiping away the lipstick from his cheek and trying to calm his way out of the blush that threatened to erupt into a nosebleed. At this, Leena quirked a brow up.   
  
"She do something more than kiss you?" She asked.   
  
"Eh... Heh... Anyway..."   
  
"I`ll take that as a yes. Who knew Mister Potential could be so inept with girls?"   
  
"I blame the media," Leon muttered sardonically, slowly trying to shift his way back to normal.   
  
  
"Sounds like we`re about to land," Brad stated with an unerring apathy, his resolve undetectable yet utterly unbroken by hours of being locked in the dark with Jamie and Leyla, each of whom sat up from where they were laying with one another and hazarded to glance in the door`s general direction - at least, Jamie _thought_ he was glancing in the door`s direction. He was actually staring at the wall of Brad`s bed, but Leyla had done better.   
  
"Someone`s coming," she stated, eyes shifting to track the movements of six minds, coming down to their level through an elevator. "Six of them. Their intentions aren`t good, either," she said, not knowing how she knew these things but still making use of them regardless. "Four are armed," she added as an afterthought.   
  
"Must be the welcome party, come to make sure we`re presentable," Brad commented. Jamie was eerily silent.   
  
_ "If we shift, you might be able to take them out."   
  
_ No reply.   
  
_ "I know you`re there, Will."   
  
"I`m just a tragic figment of you`re overactive imagination, Jamie. It`s not time for me to put on a show. Yet."   
  
"Eh?"   
  
_ He was roused out of his mind`s civil war by a poke to the elbow, causing him to glance blindly in Leyla`s direction. "What?" He asked in a whisper.   
  
"Stop doing that, will you?" She asked, her voice hushed and cautious.   
  
"Doing what?" He asked back.   
  
"Mumbling to yourself..."   
  
_ "He has two personalities. Himself, and me."   
  
_ "... Oh," Leyla said before Jamie could even react, sighing and then leaning against him tiredly. Brad`s voice rang out once again a few seconds later.   
  
"Any idea how long it`ll be before they get to us?" He asked thoughtfully, as stoic and apathetic as he had been during the entire time.   
  
"A few more minutes. Probably ten, if they go slowly," she answered without any real emotion behind it. Brad wasn`t someone she`d warmed up to, and for what it was worth, he didn`t like her very much either for that matter. Jamie was literally the only reason that _both_ were present in the first place. It was awkward as the silence from before settled over the room again, the only sound being that of the wait for what was probably going to be the end.   
  
Eight minutes later, light filled the room and six armed guards burst in...   
  
  
Morning? No. The sun was too high for it to be morning, how long had he been asleep?   
  
_ It`s 1:30 in the afternoon.   
  
_ It was a bit chilly too. That was odd, and he wasn`t lying on the top of that wall anymore. How had he even known that the sun was too high for it to be morning when it was actually shaded wherever he was laying?   
  
Gold barriers pressed together on either side, and to his front, and it was a bit cramped - he couldn`t sit up, but he could stretch in almost any direction but up or down. The 'floor' was hard, a bit cool around him but warm and somewhat sticky where his skin had been pressed to it, as if he`d been laying there a while. Oddly enough, his head wasn`t in pain from laying on it for however long it had been.   
  
"Where am I?" He asked patiently, suddenly feeling the 'floor' slant, and watching the barriers crack apart until completely splitting away from each other, looking very oddly like teeth...   
  
"... Eeee..."   
  
_ Don`t worry. I won`t grind you into flesh chunks.   
  
_ It was then that an utterly freaked out Bit Cloud came sliding out of the Liger Zero`s mouth, narrowly avoiding the sharpened sides of several teeth before falling to the hard concrete, miraculously landing on his feet with a small stagger forward, smacking his head into the barrier wall as a result.   
  
"Ow."   
  
_ That first step is always a doozy...   
  
_ "You`re mocking me again," he growled out at the Organoid, watching the Liger rumble something of it`s own at the general conversation and leer from side to side, almost nervous with anticipation. For a moment, he was dumbfounded. Zeke didn`t answer, the Liger didn`t greet him in any sort of formal way - it usually at least growled the equivelent of a 'Hi, good morning!' to him - and only the sun beat down on him from the skies above, making him almost long to be back in the shade for a few seconds.   
  
_ Don`t you feel it?_ Zeke asked, hesitant and even slightly taken with something that the blonde hadn`t noticed yet. _At the edge of your mind, do you feel it? Like a heartbeat, almost...   
  
_ "What the heck are you blabbing about?" Came the reply with obvious indignance, every single last ounce of it being intended from start to finish. Bit obviously wasn`t in the mood for the mystic act right now.   
  
_ Calm down. Close your eyes. Open your thoughts_, the Organoid advised with an almost placidly drunk sort of tone, the words sounding as though he wanted them to be slurred for added effect. Bit shrugged and did as asked, almost instantly feeling that constantly angered part of his personality shifting into a near intoxicated euphoria of promised bloodshed and violence. Revenge against _everything_ that lived, breathed and could die...   
  
** [**_"**STOP RIGHT THERE!!!**"_**]**   
  
"Gah!" He yelped at the sound of his many-times-great grandmother yelling at him, snapping out of his haze, pupils that had nearly been on the verge of fading from sight and eyes that had threatened to turn glassy suddenly returning to normal in an instant as he jumped forward, landing bent over and glancing around frantically.   
  
_ So..._ Zeke trailed off, almost seeming high off of whatever had just about caught Bit and dragged him down to some blissful Hell.   
  
** Stop,   
  
** There was when Zeke also snapped out of his fervor, and again, the Liger glanced around in much the same way as it`s pilot, though the cause of Zeke`s return to sanity had been different. For Bit, it was a subconcious reaction, something planted there long ago by... Something else, perhaps just a natural defense, perhaps a bit of foresight on behalf of Fiona, no one would quite be able to tell either way. For Zeke? Well, that was another story for another day entirely.   
  
Suffice to say, both of them had been rattled back from the brink of something else entirely, and at the edge of both their minds, through their own Bond, a third voice growled out with annoyance, a fourth presence seeming to overwhelm it from their thoughts before both of the extra weights vanished as mysteriously as they`d first been felt and heard.   
  
"What-" - _the Hell?_ Bit and Zeke said as one, each now feeling more than a little paranoid.   
  
  
_ They`ve escaped. At least two of them made it into the ventillation system, the other, I`m not too sure about.   
  
_ A mirthless laugh filled the dimly lit room.   
  
_ I fail to see the humor in this situation.   
  
_ "Calm down," Vilhelm ordered, almost sounding amused yet at the same time, sounding dangerously serious. "They may have escaped their cell but they`re still on the Fatalistic Renegade, correct?" He asked, already knowing the answer for the most part.   
  
_ Yes.   
  
_ "Then the solution is easy," the human of two said without a care about it, flipping a switch on a small panel that sat at the right side of his desk, then speaking into a receiver that extended up and curved towards his face afterward. "Captain," he began smoothly. "Alert Captain Turpscavey that her prisoners have gotten loose. Advise that she heighten security at all exits, and make sure to keep an extra guard on the command and control, hangar and Core areas of her Whale King. If she is unable, due to having to meet me, take charge for her."   
  
"Yes sir. Any other orders?"   
  
"Yes, actually..."   
  
"What?"   
  
"If they find our wayward 'guests,' be sure to avoid disciplining them. I want them locked up, together if possible."   
  
"... Understood."   
  
"That is all, Captain," Rommel said, flipping off the comm without so much as a good-bye, then glancing over at Spectacle`s disapproving glare. The Organoid was obviously not as patient and scheming as it`s Bound, but it was willing to listen to Vilhelm`s explanation, at least.   
  
"It`s all relatively simple, my dear friend."   
  
_ How so?   
  
_ "We use the two males as bartering chips into Tsun`s soul," he began. "We kill the unimportant one and her resolve starts to break, as does the resolve of her apparent boyfriend, thus driving them together for mutual support. We allow this to continue for a while, effectively driving them to rely so completely on each other that they can barely think otherwise, and then..."   
  
_ You cut the last strings and break her will to live by killing him. Malicious, cruel and heartbreaking. I like it.   
  
_ "Exactly. We`ll also have to arrange the deaths of her adoptive family, but that`s another story."   
  
_ The last time I bothered checking up on them was when I was dragging Chapman back.   
  
_ "Where are they?"   
  
_ Heading for Farentown, the long way so as to avoid bandits.   
  
_ "Which puts them right in the line of fire for the Hellwalker."   
  
_ And also puts them into a cluster with Harabec Davids, his nephew, Kyle Mazemia and a few dozen other well known Zoid pilots.   
  
_ Another chuckle, this one much more amused than the one preceeding it.   
  
"Don`t you just love it when they try to band together for survival, only to paint a bigger target on their backs in the process?"   
  
_ Indeed.   
  
_   
With as much turmoil as there was consuming Bit Cloud, and as much sadistic madness as there was dripping off of Kale Obscura, it was relatively easy to overlook the mute figure currently sitting alone in pitched blackness, not even granted the luxury of the minimal lighting that someone like Leyla Tsun could see through. He was angry, depressed, felt the urge to scream but at the same time realized that no one would actually _hear_ him doing so, so what was the point in bothering?   
  
He felt unkempt to the extreme. About the only bathing he`d been given was a pressure hose wash during the third day of his captivity, nothing since. It felt like grease had become filmed over his skin, his clothing stank and he`d only been able to relieve himself three times a day if he was lucky, mainly since he couldn`t even see the toilet they`d stuck in the room as an afterthought. He felt hungry constantly, his hair had begun to grow out over the past week or two and his eyes were on the verge of looking bloodshot.   
  
Black bangs hung out a bit oddly over his forehead, brown eyes that once echoed freedom now only echoed something faint and almost lifeless. The hair on the back of his head had grown out as well, not as much as his bangs, but he would`ve liked to cut it at some point, back to normal. His jacket felt heavy, a bit moist from sweat that came from the lack of air conditioning, and his shirt felt like it was slowly becoming a second skin. The same applied to his jeans and his shoes and socks, though his gloves had been nonchalantly crammed into his jacket pockets.   
  
Even through this though, even with his body coming somewhat close to it`s breaking point, even with his mind on the verge of crumbling into despair and even with his emotions consumed by grief over the loss of his friends - the only family he`d even had anymore - he still had the will to hold his head up, even if it only meant staring at the faint crack under the cell door that let a bit of grayish light trickle in, nowhere near enough to break the grip of the darkness in the room, but still.   
  
His intentions to kill Vilhelm Rommel and the Organoid, Borealis, had been forgotten. His only intention now was freedom. Defiant as a lion, but weary enough to avoid showing it openly, Bill Chapman hadn`t been broken yet.   
  
His only objective, the only thing he could think of, sat tauntingly on the other side of the door, but he waited. Like a predator stalking prey, he waited, because that was all he could do.   
  
The collar bit at his skin, he ignored it, focusing on that objective with everything he had.   
  
_ "I`ll get out of here. I`ll get this damn collar off. I`ll be free again..."_ He kept repeating to himself, seething every now and then but only waiting.   
  
Brown, bloodshot eyes narrowed. He would get out of here alright. It probably _would_ kill him, but he _would_ escape.   
  
  
And with as much turmoil as there was consuming the Organoids known as Zeke and Shadow, it was equally easy to forget the Organoid that was intricately linked to Bill Chapman.   
  
Borealis had been sitting silent for hours now, standing in the middle of a road near Wind City, completely alone and utterly unmoving. It hadn`t even dimmed it`s optics, it hadn`t thought, it hadn`t budged and it hadn`t even had any emotions during this time. Behind it lay a small body-imprint of a crater, shaped eerily similar to the Organoid that had been occupying it all of fifteen or sixteen hours before - maybe longer. Borealis wasn`t too good at keeping time, and even if he was, it wouldn`t have mattered now since he hadn`t even done _anything_ during that time, effectively having gone static.   
  
Still covered in dust and dirt, he almost looked like a statue of some kind.   
  
**_ ... Well, that was sure FUCKED UP, wasn`t it?   
  
_** A clinically insane statue, but a statue none the less.   
  
**_ So Billy-boy`s gone and gotten KIDNAPPED by the NUTLESS GREEN WONDER, the apocalypse has come and been a letdown since demons haven`t eaten my soul for being a sinful little TRANSCOLORED PARASITE on the ASS of SOCIETY, and I don`t have SIXTY-HOT-DAMN pounds of BURNING LEAD lodged in my nonexistent sphincter.   
  
_** A pause.   
  
**_ Er... What day is it?_** The Organoid asked, leering around and finally realizing that he was still alone. Another pause followed, then that lengthy, Specularesque head-and-neck curled down low enough for a clawed foot to reach up and smack the dust off. After that, he straightened up and glanced over at a tree, expecting an answer.   
  
**_ ... Come on, YOU would know, right?   
  
_** The tree didn`t say anything.   
  
**_ ... Damnit, aren`t you fuckers supposed to be all ancient and shit?   
  
_** Still no answer.   
  
**_ Oh, the silent treatment. Boo-hoo, you don`t WUB me!   
  
_** Nope. No answer.   
  
**_ Flagh. Guess I`ll have to raid the city or something... Wonder if they still have that special on fluffy egg-muffins?   
  
_** Another pause. Revelation.   
  
**_ ... Shit. I haven`t got a stomach...   
  
_** Another pause, again. Denial.   
  
**_ Ah what the Hell do I care? They taste so goo... Wait...   
  
_** Yet _another_ pause. Another revelation as well.   
  
**_ Well fuck me in the toes and call me Smegma Mole Bob, I ain`t got taste buds!   
  
_** Acceptance. And then the unusually twitch-happy Organoid started wobbling drunkenly towards the city, happily humming out the tune to an old nursery rhyme and occasionally stopping to do what vaguely resembled breakdancing.   
  
  
Just before sun began to set. It was about time, Kale figured, the sound of the rhythmic heartbeats that only he could truly seem to feel suddenly beginning to pick up like never before. A dull smile slowly etched it`s way onto his face, accompanied moments later by the sound of the hall door sliding open and then shut again.   
  
_ "Like clockwork,"_ he thought with barely concealed amusement, listening in on the one-sided conversation to follow.   
  
"Are you here to replace us?"   
  
"Where`s your partner? You know there`s supposed to be two-on-watch at all times with this one..."   
  
"Gwooooonnng," Kale stated, drawing the attention of both guards as he looked up from the floor. "You fucking lose."   
  
Two loud yells joined by two equally loud cracks of steel toed boots against the bone of skulls followed, soon accompanied by the sounds of two unconscious soldiers falling to the floor. Rayth landed out of both kicks from the same jump, with a certain unintended, natural grace, like a predatory bird diving on a fish, his balance utterly flawless in every way.   
  
"I see you still have that gift of gab," Rayth pointed out blandly, drawing the keys from his pocket as Kale stood up and approached the door of his own cell with a shrug.   
  
"You don`t ever speak, someone has to make up the difference."   
  
Silence followed between them, and without a word, Rayth slipped the right key into the lock and turned, sliding the door out of place and allowing his longtime comrade out, speaking only as it was needed while offering his other arm up, which held a pilot`s jumpsuit that eerily resembled the one that Kale had been wearing before.   
  
"I found it in a future disposal room. I needed something to occupy my time."   
  
"I never figured you to be much of a sewer," Kale pointed out, taking his favored outfit back and changing clothes right then and there, heedless of anything even remotely resembling modesty. It got to be a moot point when one was about to callously murder every single human being within ten miles and get away with it. Rayth had done a good job on the clothing repairs though, even washing out the blood and dirt, sewing the holes shut and going so far as to retrieve the gloves and boots as well.   
  
When he was finished, Kale nonchalantly dropped his prison uniform onto the floor and cracked his knuckles.   
  
"Good job on the threads," he commented, stepping over to the two downed guards and then casually snapping their necks, one after the other.   
  
"Was that really called for?" Rayth asked, chucking the keys off somewhere and then leaning sideways onto the bars of Kale`s former cell. The other shrugged, placing one of his own hands onto his former uniform and standing up straight. There was something silvery in his hand now...   
  
"Not really."   
  
_ Click_.   
  
Rayth blinked, glancing down at his wrist and then to the bar that it was cuffed too, all too late realizing just why Kale had walked forward and hid his hands behind the guards in their last encounter, and why he had just killed the two on duty. Each was out of his reach by mere inches, he was completely trapped in hostile territory.   
  
"What are you doing, Kale?" He asked bluntly, showing no emotion for the time being. Not yet, anyway. The other only smiled, stepping away and getting a good view of his handiwork as if to burn it into his memory.   
  
"Leaving you, the same way you left me. Alone, in hostile territory, with your only companion being your own screams," the other answered, still smiling the smile of the damned. Rayth didn`t get the chance to speak though, as Kale reached down and drew the keys to the handcuffs from each of the two dead guards, calmly tossing them out of sight down the hallway and then turning to leave.   
  
"You have eight minutes," he stated, coldly beginning to walk away.   
  
"Kale..."   
  
No response. Just iced footsteps ringing off of the cement like the steady strumming of a violin playing out the song of the Grim Reaper.   
  
"Kale, damn it! Get back here!" Rayth yelled, fear finally beginning to take hold as the other made it to the door.   
  
"_Kale_!"   
  
The door slipped open...   
  
"**_KALE!!!_**"   
  
And was promptly slammed shut with a terrifying finality, only a mad man`s laugh audible on the other side.   
  
  
"Sir!"   
  
Conrad snapped awake out of his half-asleep stupor, glancing over at the tactical officer with full alertness. Drowsiness wasn`t something military personnel could typically afford, most were rigorously trained to withstand a few weeks of near-sleep deprivation with relative ease, commanding officers were no different. "Report," he ordered, just short of a yell.   
  
"Starting to pick up activity in the cocoon, power readings are going even further off the scale," came the reply, fast and tense.   
  
"Alright, ready to fire on my mark!" Conrad shouted needlessly, the need to adjust to so little sleep in the past days finally showing a sign or two. He needed to get his third or fourth wind going, but at the rate things were moving, he highly doubted he`d get the chance.   
  
"All units report readiness..."   
  
"Fire at will! Hose the bastard!"   
  
  
_ Here we go again...   
  
_ Bit would`ve taken a moment to question what Zeke had meant, but he was rendered temporarily deaf by the time he finished processing the information. The ground rattled, glass cracked and buildings shook, the sheer firepower being thrown out by the assault force measuring in at even more than it had been during the previous bombardment. They weren`t holding _anything_ back this time, every shot was pouring in with a minimal reload time and they weren`t pausing to wait for slower firing guns anymore - _everything_ was being thrown at the cocoon.   
  
"----`-- --- ------- ----!" Bit shouted, only to realize he was completely mute from the sheer roar of the explosions that were wracking the entire area around what had once been the Geno Saurer. He could barely even hear himself think, and he could only scarcely hear what Zeke was trying to say.   
  
_ We have to get out of here!   
  
_ "**_----?!_**" Bit screamed back, glaring up at the Liger. The two had the fortune of having been near the hospital and the cafeteria, both of which were - along with the central barracks - near the rear of the base, which unfortunately kept them away from the only current exit, which was located near the front to allow for rapid deployment.   
  
Another loud shockwave tumbled through Bit`s ears, blowing out air pressure and leaving him with a headache and massive dizziness, even as a bolt of black lightning shot out of the billowing, obsidian smoke cloud that was funneling up from where the Republicans were effectively bombing the daylights out of the Geno cocoon, followed by a second bolt and then a third, each randomly blazing off into the late afternoon skies.   
  
_ Get in!   
  
_ He didn`t have to be told twice as the Liger bowed it`s head down, the cockpit flipping open mutely. Bit was inside by the end of the following seconds, already pulling the harness down while the roof slipped shut, internal soundproofing doing the rest to cut down on the insane amount of noise that had blasted through the air every few seconds. Finally, he could speak and actually register the sound of his own voice, glaring from side to side before grabbing the controls almost frantically.   
  
"What the Hell is going on?!"   
  
_ Shadow`s finishing his task. We have to get out of here or kill Obscura, pick a choice and let`s do it!_ Zeke ordered, genuinely on the edge of his seat with something that could only register as fear. If he`d had the chance, Bit would`ve asked what was so terrifying to put fear into a creature that had all but laughed in the face of the Berserk Fury during the Royal Cup.   
  
"You already know what I pick," the blonde stated, keeping the Liger Zero moving at a slow, lingering pace towards the command building of the base, a glint in his eyes saying all of his intentions without a word needing to be spoken.   
  
It was only when the two arrived at the front of the main building did they actually notice the figure who appeared upon it`s roof, staring down at them with murder in his eyes.   
  
"Out already, huh?" Bit asked. "Must be trying to make it ea-"   
  
He never finished the sentence.   
  
The Liger, Zeke, Bit, _everyone_ on the firing lines of the Republican army froze instantly. Ammunition detonated in mid-air, lasers and plasma beams, pulse cannon bolts and missiles all vaporized or exploded from the sheer force of one final sound tearing out of the blackness at the center of the blast zone, a roar so terrible and thunderous that it sewed nothing but terror in the hearts of everyone for miles around.   
  
Solid crimson eyes lit up in the midst of the blackness, the roar of a demonic tyrant shredding through smoke, blowing local air support back and forcing the smoke cloud to expand in all directions as shards of the former cocoon rained down like death on the field, forming a perfect circle at the very edge of the blast zone.   
  
With the sun at his back, Kale finally lifted his head from staring down at Bit and the Liger, leering off into the distance with a psychotic grin as he spoke words that hadn`t been uttered in generations, paraphrasing someone who hadn`t lived for over two hundred years.   
  
"Welcome to the gateway, _Bit Cloud_..." He began.   
  
The roar quieted down, everything stopped in a single, terrifying instant, and Kale threw his arms out to either side like a fallen messiah.   
  
"**_THE GATEWAY TO HELL!!!_**"   
  
Another roar shattered the silence after his words like glass against a tank round, rippling through the ears, hearts and minds of everyone for miles in all directions, blowing the smoke back by hundreds of feet with every second that trickled by in a torturously slow anthem of doom, obscuring the entire potential battlefield, but for a single streak of purple, black and white that rippled into sight. Screams lit through the broadband, Bit turned briefly to glance behind himself in fear, fear that was echoed by both his Zoid and it`s Organoid.   
  
He knew what he had to do.   
  
The claws of the Liger lit an unearthly gold, and the Zoid reared back briefly, but it was already too late.   
  
In slow motion, Kale spoke again, even while he made the jump from atop the building, almost floating into the air.   
  
"**_SHADOW!!!_**"   
  
The roar sounded again, the streak tore from the cloud and the destructive nature that had been Raven was born anew, an unnaturally dark bolt of energy ripping through the air above the Liger and crashing through the top of the main building with such speed that it was like a bullet gutting through soft flesh, whipping into the air with an impossible agility before sweeping back towards the black cloud, shattering a Whale King in the process.   
  
Kale was gone by the time that Bit finished blinking.   
  
"Oh God..." He muttered to himself, instinctively turning the Liger around and taking off at full speed for the battlefield, a symphony of screams and explosions echoing in his mind, hundreds of lives ending with every passing minute. "Gotta stop him..."   
  
_ We have to get out of here, is more like it!   
  
_ "I won`t let that bastard kill anyone else!"   
  
_ This is past us now! We have to get out of here!   
  
_ "**_FUCK RUNNING!_**" Bit screamed, just as the Zero leapt over the outer wall in a full sprint for where the slaughter was taking place.   
  
_ This is insane!_ Zeke pleaded, his words falling on completely deaf ears. Twin clipping sounds from the Liger`s back, followed by the blaze of dual thrusters burning at their full power. Trembling with a fright that would reduce any sane being into a puddle of terrified slop, Bit Cloud prepared to dive straight into Hell all over again.   
  
"**_IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!_**"   
  
History repeated itself once more...   
  


_ End Chapter Twelve_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** *Cue Raven`s Theme.* AHBLATS next chapter... If you think Kale and Shadow were bad before, wait`ll ya see what they`re capable of _now_ >D  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Agreed about Leon. I`ve actually got a point to make about him, but it can wait for when I actually have the chance for it... As for Leena, I`m not through with her yet. Mark, Kyle, Beck, Abbie, etc, are just characters I haven`t been able to cram in very much just yet. I`ll be able to fit them in sooner or later though, especially since they`re sitting on one of the two major target zones for some of Rommel`s 'super weapon' experiments...  
  
**Illidan:** The bodycount starts going up next chapter, and from the way things are looking about now, Rayth is going to be one of the first major characters to get chucked onto the pile, along with Conrad, and hell - maybe even Bit and Zeke...  
  
That`s all for now folks. Enjoy the cliffhanger evilness and leave a review, see ya next time! Sh33p out. 


	13. Onslaught

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick something fast, heavy and brutal. Raven`s theme comes to mind. Trust me, you`ll be needing it.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**   
Onslaught   
  
  
  


"**_WHAT THE HE-_**" "**_WHE-_**" "**_IT`S ALREADY DOWNED THREE SQUADS?!_**" "_**I CAN`T SEE IT!!!**_"   
  
Broadband was a jumble of terrified screams and pleas for information, even prayers to a God that obviously wasn`t bothering to listen to anyone on the battlefield. Conrad felt his chest tighten.   
  
"**_IT GOT THE HERMANN! IT GOT THE HERMANN! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS THING?!_**"   
  
Another massive roar of fire and smoke, obscured by the darkness that had rolled over the battlefield when the smoke cloud expanded out on the sheer force of this... _Thing`s_ voice, painting an image of a Hell that no human being was ever meant to see in a thousand lifetimes. Death practically dripped from the air as the Europlas turned towards where the scattering firing lines had once been, only to watch as a purple and black glow shot through the smoke, only barely visible as anything more than an outline.   
  
It swept down into the battlefield, slamming hard into something and briefly revealing nothing but a pair of deathly crimson eyes, glowing like bloody full moons, and then both eyes turned away, a glow of flame erupted through the air from where this monstrosity`s legs probably would be, heralding a jump away at speeds that evenly matched those of a Lightning Saix with frightful ease, just as a Command Wolf exploded right in front of where the eyes had been, shifting the heavy atmosphere of smoke and death for a few moments.   
  
Another explosion. Another. Another. Another and another after that, screams were cut off as they began, Zoids cried out in unbearably brief agony and died, it was a slaughter in every sense of the word.   
  
"Sir, we`re dropping like flies!" One of the crew pointed out in a fearful yell.   
  
Conrad only sighed. To him, everything seemed to calm down, settling into a slow motion waltz of unspeakable destruction as he spoke in reply, his own voice sounding resigned, accepting of a futility that was only now becoming fully apparent - though he had known it since the bombardment.   
  
"Put out the order to retreat in any direction. I don`t think you need me to tell helm that it goes for us too."   
  
"Y-yes, sir!" The comm officer said firmly, trembling so badly that he almost shut down his own console by accident.   
  
A second went by. It was filled with more explosions.   
  
Two seconds. More explosions still.   
  
Three seconds and the officer whipped around, shouting something that Conrad was too deaf to hear anymore. His only sounds were his own thoughts.   
  
_ "We never knew what we were getting ourselves into, did we?"   
  
_ A slow shake of the head and an unearthly smirk. Had he lived any longer, he would`ve remembered Bit Cloud`s dire warning.   
  
As it stood, the answer came as a silver glowing clawed hand swept across the command and control section of the Europlas from above, instantly killing everyone inside in a torrent of fire and evaporating blood. Two loud thumps echoed a second later, a thick, long tail crashed into the open wound and then raked it`s way back out, pulverizing the Zoid Core and just about everything else at the central section of the nigh indestructable command Zoid, which burst into flames a second later.   
  
Another roar shattered through the pitched blackness as Jesse Marcai`s Command Wolf touched into a skid, dodging under the flying mass of a burning Shield Liger. In all of two minutes flat, the sense of superiority that had once permeated from him had been absolutely shattered. For the first time since being a gang member in the rougher side of New Helic City, Marcai was in utter terror.   
  
His sense of security had also been shattered. It was a sense that he had been proud of once, because his Command Wolf was both fast enough and equally armed enough to stand head to head with the Shadow Fox on a roughly even playing field, it was a prototype model he`d been 'given' by Morgan to break in when he`d gotten out of jail. He and his Command Wolf had since wracked up dozens of kills against bandits and gang members, but this new creature was beyond anything he`d ever confronted before.   
  
From the age of fifteen to twenty-five, almost all young men subconsciously feel that it is their duty to be the baddest, toughest, meanest mother fucker on the face of the planet. At age twenty-four, Mister Violence, Jesse Marcai, had found that the job had already been taken. For some inexplicable reason, that _almost_ made him feel comfortable.   
  
If he had lived to escape, he probably would`ve started questioning his own sanity for that thought.   
  
The pair of lightning fast jaws lined with rows of razor sharp teeth ended his considerations before he could even process the instinctive urge to scream out a curse word or five, clamping shut around the top of the Command Wolf`s head and then ripping it right off, flinging it up into the air before a whisp of silver sliced straight through it`s crumpled form, leaving both pieces to explode seconds later.   
  
Finally, gunfire started to ring out, but it was futile in the extreme.   
  
No one was going to be getting out of here alive.   
  
Another roar shockwaved through the smoke cloud, thinning and spreading it considerably before that purple-black streak of energy became visible again, bolting through the air and slam dancing across the guts of every small aerial Zoid in sight, from Pteras to Storm Sworders to one of the Hammerheads, it spared nothing, leaving them all to crash down to the ground in flames. Anyone who ejected was simply slammed again, forming clouds of evaporating, super heated blood that seemed to paint up the already orange and crimson skyline of the late afternoon.   
  
The streak whipped around with agility that defied known laws of physics, twisting around one of the smaller Whale Kings like a cyclone at right angles so quickly that it`s mere passage sucked a dozen armored panels off of the carrier-gunship`s surface, flinging them like bullets in all directions before stabbing straight through the Zoid`s rear thrusters and vanishing within.   
  
An instant later, the entire Whale King vanished from the tip of the tail onward, consumed by a charged particle beam so powerful that it literally humiliated the Geno Saurer, and put the Breaker and the Fury both on notice. It was absolutely breathtaking, like a bolt of pure, raving madness that was never even meant to exist, blazing through the skies and into the night with such speed, heat and force that the sound it made only came after the first second of firing.   
  
The bolt became visible again while the remaining chunk of the Whale King`s tail section started to fall, ripping through the air once again before diving back into the cloud, just as the remaining Whale Kings finally began to veer away, their captains realizing just how dire the retreat order had been.   
  
More explosions lit through the smoke, hundreds of them. Gunshots were frantic, missiles randomly shot from the clouds, along with bolts of every kind of energy weapon used by the Republican army, these people had lost their cohesion and they`d done it for a damned good reason. They wanted to live, even if it meant throwing each other to the angel of death in the process.   
  
Bit Cloud felt his resolve slowly starting to crack and waver, Zeke had broken down into absolutely terrified gibberish in the Organoid tongue and the Liger itself was showing signs of palpable fear, but he continued onward, watching the base of the smoke cloud bulge and distort with recurring frequency. Parts of dead Zoids flew through the air like they were being thrown by an irate toddler, and several fully intact Zoids soon joined them. None of them were aerial Zoids though, all had merely been flung through the air with such force that they were smacking into the sides of the Whale Kings, hundreds - if not a thousand or more - feet in the air, hitting with such force that it was believable that the things would`ve continued on for a half a mile or more.   
  
Reluctantly, the Liger Zero slipped into the abyss of blackened chaos, and explosions shocked and tore at the senses like knives, screams so terrified and loud that he could hear them even without having his communications online. At least he _thought_ they weren`t online.   
  
"Come to die?" A smug voice asked as the massacre started to slow, as if Kale had actually begun to run out of targets. There had been three thousand or more of the Republic`s best remaining Zoids on the battlefield. Most had been annihilated by now.   
  
It had been six minutes.   
  
"I`m going to stop you..." Bit said flimsily, glancing around like a deer caught in headlights with a poacher on the other side of the road. "Even if it kills us _both_."   
  
"Aren`t you just mister hero, huh?"   
  
Another explosion, this time as a Gojulas appeared right in front of the Liger, so close that it was visible through the smoke. The towering, powerful Zoid was struggling in vain, a blade had been impaled through the center of it`s chest from behind, holding it in place and concealing whatever was carrying out this mass murder with such horrifying reverie.   
  
"... You bastard."   
  
**_ WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE, GOD DAMNIT!   
  
_** Afraid o` me, Zeke?   
  
_ Shut up. Just leave me alone!   
  
_ ... No.   
  
With that, the blade lit up, glowing silver and drawing straight out of the Gojulas, leaving a thin hole through which to see.   
  
When Bit hazarded to look, all he saw was a red optics unit staring back at him. If looks could kill, he would have died instantly.   
  
A black silhouette, only barely visible against the already black background of the smoke lunged off to the side with unbelievable speed, not even using thrusters that it apparently had to make a flipping, twisting jump that seemed utterly impossible, landing and executing it again.   
  
The blonde pilot of the Liger Zero was frozen in fear. For a second, he could do nothing. The Gojulas creaked and fell over, exploding violently an instant later, but by then, he and the Liger were long gone, heading right into the thick of things as another explosion sounded, this time from behind.   
  
"How the Hell fast _is_ he?!"   
  
Red eyes streaked by, just behind a silver blade that soon vanished into something just in front of the Liger, slitting back out and then vanishing again into an ethereal, deathly glow. The bolt of murder crackled through the air, leaving behind only another explosion. By the time Bit swung the Zero around on it`s foreclaws, another Whale King had been hit, plowed through like it had been nothing at all, and not just once - but so many times that the thing looked like swiss cheese by the time that Kale and Shadow had finished with it, crumpling on impact with the ground and throwing off a massive shockwave of dust, dirt and some flame.   
  
The streak continued into the air, and as the Liger Zero emerged out of the cloud of smoke, Bit looked up in time to see it come to a blindingly instant halt, so high into the air that it looked like nothing more than a demonic black speck in the skies, falling down at an angle and vanishing above the top of the last Whale King, just out of sight.   
  
"You were right," he finally admitted with a wince. "There`s nothing we can do..."   
  
_ So let`s fucking **LEAVE ALREADY!!!   
  
**_ "With ya there," Bit conceded finally, feeling a rising shame as he turned back from the sight of the Whale King being crumpled at a sickening angle, it`s back bending down hard as an enormous charged particle beam, punched straight through it like a hammer before actually _curving through the air intelligently_ and _targeting_ the Liger Zero, only to slam down with a thunderous impact right in front of the fleeing Zoid, tearing through the ground in a perfect circle around it before exploding in such a controlled fashion that Bit and Zeke were actually left utterly unscathed.   
  
"_No escape_," Kale stated bluntly, the black speck now finally visible once again as it flew back into the cloud of smoke. Bit couldn`t even make out any details on it other than a near solid black color scheme.   
  
"Fuck," he growled out to himself, wincing visibly and glaring at the perfect ring around his Zoid. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _**FUCK!!!**_" He screamed in repetition, finding it the only word that actually even came close to suiting his needs at the moment. "**_I DON`T WANNA DIE YET, DAMNIT!_**"   
  
"Too bad."   
  
One final explosion sounded, followed by absolute, bone breaking silence. Bit and Zeke were the only targets left on the battlefield.   
  
It had been seven minutes and fifty-eight seconds.   
  
The final two seconds saw a number of things happen. The first was the glow of solid white death from the very core of the cloud, the second was Bit Cloud`s eyes widening when he realized that he wasn`t the target this time, the third was another charged particle beam tearing through the air and the fourth was the beam curving over the Liger Zero so flawless that even the windsheer missed it.   
  
The fifth and final thing to happen occurred _exactly_ on the dot. Eight minutes and the entirety of Garnhelm Base went up in flames, hit directly by the charged particle beam with such force that the wind sheer alone tore the outer barrier walls off the ground like the peeling of a band-aid, while the beam itself hit the central command building so hard that a quasi-nuclear shockwave rang off from the impact point.   
  
"Ohmygod," Bit shook out, staring at the blast through horrified, frightened eyes. If not for the light filtration system of the Zero`s cockpit, he`d`ve been permanently blinded instantly.   
  
When he finally looked back from the explosion, to his right, he saw the cause of this unholy massacre for the first time, so clearly that it made his blood run cold, his eyes wanted to water and his mouth was as dry as the desert that this violence had taken place in.   
  
Smoke curled around it`s black form, revealing clawed, thick hands that looked eerily reminiscent of a Strike Laser Claw combined with the claws of a Geno Saurer, with thick, clawed toes to match. A blade sat atop it`s head, colored silver like the claws and extending out the full length of the head and neck twice over, bladed on both sides and pointed sharply at the end, connected to the head by a thick 'hilt,' which swiped back to shift the appearance from a horn to a bladed crest, adding an air of style to the already lethal looking death machine.   
  
It`s body was angled smoothly all over, the only smooth curved were the circles of what was visible of the stabilizer caps, and even those were rough. Sharp, foot-long teeth were stained with blood and oil, though most of it had vaporized off during the firing of the charged particle cannon, which itself looked well concealed at the back of the mouth, even more so than on a Geno Saurer, the Breaker, or the Fury. It`s back held two enormous booster engines, similar in style to those of the Berserk Fury, but a bit taller, longer and a bit thinner as well, clamped shut for the time being and leading down to a smooth back, which in turn lead to a long, serpent-like tail, smoothly panelled repeatedly with what looked like folded back spines on the top and bottom, coming in rows of two all the way from the base to the tip. The tail itself was probably a little longer than the full length of the thing`s main body and head, obviously intended for use as a weapon in close combat.   
  
Overall, it was slimmer and much more smoother than a Geno Saurer, Breaker or the Fury, but at the same time, much more angled, with gray-ish panels on it`s shoulders as well, and perfectly sized, Geno Saurer-like eyes that glowed a fierce, tyrannical shade of reddish-orange. It`s footlocks were also bladed, apparently no longer useful for holding back the recoil of it`s main gun.   
  
The scene itself was like a picture of Hell in it`s entirety. Mangled Zoid parts lay burning all around, blood and oil both stained the ground in every direction, much of it smoking or steaming, as with a number of bodyparts that were in equally horrific conditions to the dead Zoids, and at the center of it all stood this... This _thing_, this embodiment of destruction, personified in a tightly collected package, like a gift from the devil, piloted by his best general and enhanced by his greatest engineer.   
  
It made Bit Cloud more terrified than anything in his life. Only now did he realize that, for all of the strain, stress and even anxiety they had caused him before, his battles with Leon Tauros, the Elephander, the previous Geno Saurer, Bill Chapman and even Vega Obscura had all been nothing but child`s play compared to what he was dealing with now.   
  
"What in the Hell _is_ that thing?" He asked vacantly, those being the only words he could even command himself to say. Kale only laughed.   
  
"Geno Saurer, no more. Say hello to the Geno Maxis."   
  
A pause, and only then did Bit realize that it took a single, all encompassing step forward, it`s foot landing on the ground with a thump so loud that it echoed in the quiet of what had once been an outright killing field.   
  
"Say hello to your own _death_."   
  
  
Indecisiveness reigned supreme atop the mesa that the Guardian and the First One stood upon, each watching the conflict below with a measure of restrained concern, Madison`s being less than Roc`s since it was borderline non-existent.   
  
** We may yet have to get involved...   
  
** "There are always Two and Five, and if the worst comes to being, One or even Four," she countered, pointing out that any one of the wildcards in this game for the fate of the planet were expendable. To an extent.   
  
** Five is... Unprepared, at the moment. Two is unstable, One is even worse than Five and Four...   
  
** "Speaks for himself. I agree," she blandly conceded, watching with keen eyes as the newly christened Geno Maxis howled out a ferocious cry of war against the cornered Liger Zero, which only barely tried roaring back in an attempt at intimidation. The scales were so imbalanced between the combatants that it was almost sickening to watch.   
  
** One shall stand, one shall fall.   
  
** "The question is whether or not one will get back up afterward."   
  
** Yes.   
  
  
** "Come and get me then, you rotten bastard..."   
  
"Trying to act brave, huh?" Kale asked amusedly, his voice chipping away at what resolve the other was beginning to cobble together.   
  
"No talk. Come. Get me."   
  
"Awww... And I was hoping for the chance to verbally humiliate you some more."   
  
"**_SHUT THE FUCK UP AND FIGHT, YOU BASTARD!_**" Bit screamed like an angry, wounded animal. In the process, he made the unusual movement of turning his fists to where his thumbs faced one another, lunging forward and pulling back. At the same time as this, the Geno Maxis` shoulders flipped open to reveal a number of some forty-odd micro-missile launchers on two panels each, with a pair of high powered pulse cannons extending into view just beneath them.   
  
Wordlessly, Kale pulled the trigger, even while Bit charged ahead and shoved the arm rakers forward, unwittingly activating the one feature of the Liger Zero that he had never actually thought to try before, just as Kale`s assault hit home.   
  
A series of explosions briefly hid the Liger from view, but when it emerged, a golden-colored energy shield had formed directly in front of it, similar in almost every way to the shields used by the Shield and Blade Ligers. With a flare of thrust from the back boosters, the Zero charged onward, closing the distance rapidly with the seemingly futile Maxis, only for Bit to realize all too late that his shield didn`t cover anything but where the Liger`s head was pointed to.   
  
Kale took perfect advantage, just like he always did when presented an actual oppertunity, lunging the Geno forward and to the right, effortlessly swinging past the Liger in the process and - with a speed that was utterly insane - cracking the Maxis` tail across the side of the Liger Zero, effortlessly flinging it high into the air.   
  
Bit recovered though, perfectly and reflexively, swinging the Liger upright and landing flawlessly on all fours as his shield died down, leaving him dumbfounded as to how he had activated it in the first place. He didn`t have time to muse on it though, a fraction of a second`s distraction was _far_ too much of an opening to give to his opponent, who used it ruthlessly and charged forward on the Geno`s feet alone. The new Zoid seemed possessed of a raptor`s grace in a tyrannosaur`s body, with the speed of a hawk to add to the already deadly combination.   
  
Perfectly balanced, it landed on one foot, directly to the Liger`s right, so close that Bit almost screamed in indignant shock, reacting just nanoseconds too late to dodge his Zoid out of the way of the murderous sidekick that slammed into it by the time he had even realized what had just happened.   
  
The Liger flew through the air again, crashing onto it`s left side and rebounding up on Zeke`s willpower alone, righting itself with a corkscrew motion as the Maxis turned to face it, eyes lighting up even brighter than before. The Zero was wounded, and like the predator it was, the Maxis smelled blood all over it.   
  
It was at about this time that Bit realized something else: Kale hadn`t even used his boosters or the ability to 'bolt' around during his previous attack.   
  
"_Shit_."   
  
"Finally realizing how screwed you are, huh?"   
  
"I should`ve killed you when I had the chance," Bit muttered, glaring daggers at the Geno Maxis and this time, not seeing himself, but seeing the incarnation of the apocalypse.   
  
"Oh boo-fucking-hoo, you _blew it_, wise guy, now ya get an all-expenses paid trip to the afterlife! Isn`t karma grand?"   
  
"Fuck you."   
  
"Fuck me? Nahhh, you`re getting gun-fucked enough for both of us," Kale stated, swinging the Geno`s shoulders shut and then allowing the Zoid to slow down for once, taking his sweet time in the approach. Bit was unamused, to say the least.   
  
"Pick a way to die. You have six seconds."   
  
No response. Bit glanced around and checked his ammo, giving off an utterly mirthless smirk before looking back up. He didn`t bother aiming - even an inch of movement would tip Kale off, or Shadow for that matter - but he still pulled the trigger anyway, watching the Maxis shake only partially from the pair of impacts that would`ve rocked the Berserk Fury off balance completely. It was all the opening he could get though, and he used it to the best of his abilities, springing forward like a predator in his own right and seeking to rake the Liger`s claws across the Maxis` throat.   
  
A clash of metal against metal, then a slam of the Liger to the ground on it`s backside, and he realized that his shots had caused even _less_ damage than he`d thought. He also realized that this Geno`s arms could also extend - but they did so on actual extender pieces, not cables which left no real control in direction. They were strong too, holding the Zero down on it`s back by nothing but it`s foreclaws, even while Kale flipped the headblade forward and smirked audibly.   
  
"Impaled while upside down. What a shitty way to die."   
  
"_I don`t intend on dying anytime soon_!"   
  
With that, Bit jammed his foot into the accelerator so hard that he almost felt as though he heard the mechanism pop several times from the pressure he put on it, causing the backboosters to flip back out and churn to life at full power, an action which resulted in the Liger Zero scraping along on the ground for a few seconds and then shooting up like a rocket, dragging the Maxis along for several paces and then trying in futility to pull it from it`s feet.   
  
Two clamps, Bit realized that Kale had just locked himself into place, he had one more open shot and he took it instinctively, pulling the trigger and firing the dual impact cannon right into the Maxis` face three times in a row. The claws released each other, the Liger faltered backwards onto it`s hind legs, then twisted itself onto all fours before it could finish falling, mule kicking the Geno right in the chest twice in a row, using the second attack to spring away into a full run.   
  
Kale only laughed, unlocking the Maxis from it`s resting place and tilting it forward, out of the smoke of the six small explosions to reveal that none of them had done _anything_ at all, while the mule kicks only resulted in chancing impact damage at best.   
  
"Yanno, Cloud... You`re really amusing when you`re scared shitless. Need a diaper change yet?" He asked mockingly, watching the Liger scramble off in the distance at full speed, making an utterly frantic attempt at escape.   
  
It was useless. Absolutely useless.   
  
"I guess it`s not too much of a hassle to show you one last treat before you die..."   
  
With that, the Maxis became engulfed in an Organoid-like aura, vanishing instantly into a sphere of purple and blackish energies that lined a solid white core, only to shoot forward like a bullet. Straight and narrow, the attack would`ve completely crushed the Liger from behind, crumpling it into a tin can-sized piece of black-and-white garbage.   
  
Zeke had other ideas.   
  
_ Incoming, dodge!   
  
_ Bit reflexively followed the order before his mind even finished processing it, slinging the Liger into a corkscrewing jump out of the way and allowing the Geno Maxis to blur by. The smaller Zoid landed in a skid on all fours, coming to a stop after several dozen feet, the other came to the same kind of halt so precisely that it was literally on a dime, turning around on a hard right angle and striking at the Liger again.   
  
Bit dodged, the Geno rebounded off of the ground like a basketball, bouncing along with explosions of dust and dirt from every contact with the ground, almost as if Kale was _playing_ with him. Effortlessly, the terror of a Zoid whipped around, bouncing through narrow motions along the ground and quickly coming to encircle the Liger Zero completely. Obscura was laughing like a mad man, the Geno Maxis was effectively 'dribbling' around the Liger so closely that even one inch more would have resulted in massive damage, blinding everything from view with a constant explosion of dust, dirt and a bit of energy here and there, until finally stopping as the Maxis itself fully materialized straight up in the air, legs and arms curled in towards the body, tail whipping in a number of directions at once, mouth open in a roar of superiority and headblade switched back into a crust.   
  
barely dodged out of the way, jumping his Zoid back by precious feet and watching the Maxis plunge down. He expected it to hit the ground on it`s head, but like so many times today, he was proven wrong, watching as the tail whipped downward and forced the attacking Zoid upright on momentum alone, crashing down across the Liger`s back and forcing it to it`s stomach while the Maxis touched down on both feet perfectly.   
  
A brutal haze of thruster-fire erupted in the Liger`s face a second later, launching the Maxis up into the air, where it`s back boosters went to work and switched open, revealing a pair of powerful thrusters that had been concealed within, both of which blazed to life in a roar of orange, carrying the Geno aloft for several hundreds of feet, into a looping turnaround and right back at the still-downed Liger Zero.   
  
Bit was ready for him this time, firing off another salvo from his dual impact cannon and then making Zeke do the rest.   
  
_ "Put the shield up!"   
  
_ Two small explosions, the Maxis continued unabated and smashed into the Liger at what seemed like full speed, kicking up a massive cloud of dust and dirt only to come flying straight back out in reverse, skidding along on it`s toes and clawed fingers to a stop, thrusters cutting out after a few seconds and golden-purple sparks clashing at several small points on it`s armored hull.   
  
Majestically and defiantly, the Liger Zero wobbled out of the cloud, it`s golden shield fading out instantly to reveal no new damage from the Geno`s last assault, though it too was sparking off bits of energies clashing against each other across it`s hull.   
  
"Relying on Zeke won`t save you forever," Kale mocked.   
  
"Maybe, but relying on Shadow won`t keep you alive forever _either_," Bit retorted, feeling on a level playing field for a matter of seconds. It likely wouldn`t last long, but at least he`d found a way to temporarily survive Kale`s endless onslaught.   
  
"Who said I was relying on him?"   
  
Bit did. Unfortunately, Bit`s inherited Van`s intelligence, Shadow cut in with an exceedingly rare burst of sarcasm.   
  
"Can it, you fucking rust bucket," Bit growled out.   
  
_ Don`t bother with him. He`s too insane to listen to us.   
  
_ Insane, determined, vengeful genius... Is there really a difference?   
  
"Not really," Kale answered, Shadow`s current Voice a mirror of his own. "But then again people never realize the truth unless it`s in hindsight, do they?" He asked casually, straightening the Maxis up and then grinning like a lunatic.   
  
Apparently not.   
  
"Oh well," Kale shrugged, even while the Maxis lunged forward again, catching Bit and Zeke so off guard that neither could do more than yell out various curses in surprise, but Kale didn`t attack, instead showing off a bit by jumping sideways over the Liger, to it`s injured right side, then jumping again, cutting off Bit`s attempt at escape by planting both feet straight into the Liger Zero`s path, crouching down and then smacking it upside the cheek with a sideways headbutt, carrying through afterward with a lash from the tail, echoing a whip-like crack over the small of the other Zoid`s back.   
  
Again, the Liger crumpled to it`s stomach in a heap, and again, Kale refused to finish it, instead planting one of the Geno`s feet right between the other Zoid`s shoulderblades and clamping his footlocks down in both places, pinning the Liger to the ground with ease.   
  
"Are you scared yet?"   
  
"**_YOU`RE GONNA DIE!_**" Bit screamed out irately in response, gnashing his teeth together and glaring up at the black form of the Geno Maxis with nothing but raw, unadulterated hatred.   
  
"Do you know what, Bit Cloud?" Kale asked, suddenly sadistically calm and utterly unamused. He sounded dead, for all intents and purposes. It was enough of a mood change that it snapped Bit out of his kill-happy frenzy long enough to ask back.   
  
"What?"   
  
"Do you know... How I`m going to kill you?"   
  
No answer.   
  
"First... I`m going to teach you fear. The kind of fear that you can`t escape from. Then, I`m going to finish teaching you pain. The kind that you can`t think through. Then, I`m going to slowly kill _everyone_ you hold dear. And then, finally, I`m going to kill _you_."   
  
"I fucking _dare_ you, _you son of a bitch_."   
  
"I never turn down a challenge," Kale shot back, the footlocks suddenly releasing and the Liger letting out a pained roar. Slowly, the Maxis stepped off, then crept away without a sound.   
  
Bit grit his teeth, realizing all too late that Kale hadn`t been playing with him.   
  
"See you again. _Pal_."   
  
A flash of purple, black and white, the Maxis was gone, blazing off into low orbit and heading for parts unknown.   
  
In the cockpit of the Liger Zero, the lone survivor of one of the most violent massacres in history began to go into convulsions. His pulse was racing, his right eyelids were twitching rapidly and his teeth were beared in an expression so tight that it made his lower jaw go numb. Only one word escape the young, blonde haired pilot`s mouth, and that word was screamed out with a fanatical, raving hatred that could only scarcely be comprehended, if such a thing were even possible.   
  
"_**KALE!!!**_"   
  
No reply came...   
  
  
"I get the feeling that tomorrow is going to be a very... _Long_ day," Madison commented, putting a rare emphasis into her words. Roc only gave a small nod as his companion leapt down from his scalp, wordlessly landing and turning around, heading beneath the centerline of the gigantic Organoid`s chest, which split open, magnetics coming into play as usual to carry her within by the steel that made up her club.   
  
** Perhaps. But I get the sense that it will be worth it.   
  
** "You`d say that about anything," she pointed out with a shrug, plopping down in the Death Stingeresque control chair and nonchalantly leaning back. Roc could take it from here, her piloting talents were rarely ever needed.   
  
An ethereal silver-lined white glow lit around the colossal Organoid`s form, soon obscuring it from view all together before it took off in a wide arc, heading straight for the Liger Zero at full speed...   
  


_ End Chapter Thirteen_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** A! H! B! L! A! H! B! L! Say it with me now! >_> *cackles and twitches about randomly.* I love screwing over the good guys... What`d everyone think of the uber Maxis? Or Bit managing to tweak the Liger into activating it`s shield on a fluke? O_o?  
  
**The Big Fisch:** So much for keeping things lighthearted, huh? >_>;;;;  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Rayth is just someone who had this annoying tendency of not **dying** when you threw him from high altitudes. Or shot him. Or stabbed him. Or hung him. But he`s pretty much d34d0r now, so, bye-bye, Rayth Takahori! As for Leon... Like I said before, I have an odd theory to point out when it comes to him, but that can wait until I get the chance to chuck it in here somewhere. And yes. Naomi has lots of cannon fodder against him, **assuming** Leena or Pierce says something... Heh. Heh. Heh. As for Borealis meeting Mark and Kyle... I`m not sure if that`d happen, but it`d still be funny since they probably wouldn`t be able to actually **talk** to each other... *Now has a warped mental image of Kyle and Mark trying to use sign language to talk to him while Borealis carves out 3rd grader hand writing with horrible spelling...* ... Hmmm...  
  
**Illidan:** So far the bodycount from this chapter alone rests at over four thousand. Named characters include Conrad, Rayth and Jesse, though I almost wanted to fling more cannon fodder into the line of fire just to expand the bloodshed but... Nahhh.  
  
**DJ Wolfwood:** Hope ya don`t mind your OC gettin` whacked, I needed something to add to Kale`s evilness/general badassness, Jesse fit the bill so... *Offers Cookie of Apology, if need-be.*  
  
And on a final note: Expect me to stop being so focused on cramped days and hours. It tends to drag on after a while and you can only cram so much into a few days, after all...  
  
That`s it for now, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out, and as always - see ya next time! 


	14. One Long Night

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick something laid back and dark, if possible, though I **do** recommend something like the opening theme for Babylon 5`s fifth season for one part in specific...  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
One Long Night   
  
  
  
"How did we get in here again?"   
  
"Your friend overtook one guard, I tackled another, you managed to kick one in the shin and deck him and then your friend shot all six of them. Then the two of us managed to cram ourselves into the vents," Leyla haphazardly explained from the front of the two-part line that she and Jamie had formed in their path through the cramped space of the Emerald Nightmare`s ventilation shafts. It was only just wide enough for Jamie - being passingly wider, a bit thicker and about a forehead taller than Leyla - to fit into, and even then he was having to compress his shoulders up into the sides of his neck, hustling along and dragging himself on his elbows since his legs and arms were just an inch or two too long to allow him to crawl like Leyla could manage.   
  
About the only blessings he had right about now were two things. The first was that he`d had the seeming misfortune of having never taken off his flight suit after the battle - which meant he`d been wearing the same thing for about three days now. Give or take a few hours. That meant that although he _did_ smell a bit rank, he was still wearing elbow and knee pads under his clothes, and even if they`d swiped his vest, he still had his gloves, boots and the fact that his shirt and his jeans were both required to be padded for dealing with point blank shrapnel damage, and while the padding wasn`t thick enough to be visible, it made _quite_ a difference when one was hauling along on their elbows, knees, scraping along with the sides of their feet and laying on their stomach in a cramped air vent.   
  
The other plus?   
  
He wasn`t sure if that thought came from his hormones or the Wild Eagle, but he felt that the other plus was the view. Jamie was a _fifteen year old male_. Sure, he was civilized in comparison to the usual young man his age, sure, his brain was in the big head, but still. He was hauling himself along behind a girl his own age(physically and mentally, at least) who was wearing semi-tight, slightly thin, white clothing and on top of that, she was starting to sweat...   
  
_ "And you call me a pig..."   
  
"You are. Shut up,"_ Jamie retorted sharply at the voice in his head, utterly annoyed in the extreme to have his nice little pleasant train of thought knocked off track.   
  
"Could you please stop doing that?" Leyla asked knowingly, halting and glancing down between her arms and legs, so that her head hung upside down and allowed her to see Jamie.   
  
"Doing what?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.   
  
"Talking to that thing."   
  
"I can`t shut him out like you could with yours," Jamie replied annoyedly.   
  
"Well, I`m hearing enough voices right now. Cut me some slack and just shut up with him, or talk with your mouth so that I`m not having to tune _you_ out too," Leyla ordered, having finally set her foot down on _something_. That was something else Jamie liked about her - he finally realized. She never made a demand without having a valid reason for it, unlike Leena, who stole his clothes, Naomi, who barely even acknowledged him without wanting something from him, or Pierce, who had merely teased and mocked him the one time they`d met.   
  
"Will do..." He finally half-mumbled, continuing to squirm along in the dark. Half-heartedly, he actually realized that he`d been spending a lot of time in the dark lately. About everything.   
  
  
Street rat. Pick pocket. Gang member. Drug smuggler. Gun runner. Zoid thief. Mercenary. Professional.   
  
Bart Huntley, Brandon Hunt, Bill Huntsman, Bret Hunts...   
  
Brad Hunter had been a _lot_ of things and a _lot_ of unimaginatively named people in his lifetime, but being disguised as a nameless private wasn`t one of them. The uniform had no listing on it other than his rank. Styled similarly to those of Guylos officers, to an extent, it was baggy at some parts, tight in others, and about the only thing he actually liked about it was the fact that it was all black and had nothing flashy hanging off of it. Even the tag representing his rank wasn`t made of any metals, it was more or less a piece of plastic that blended in with the rest of the uniform and had only the rank and a barcode stamped on it, barely visible.   
  
The uniform was a bitch for his hair though, he`d had to tuck all of it into the back of the collar in such a way that it wouldn`t look like that was what he was doing, and he`d managed. Not easily, but he _had_ pulled it off with reasonable success. He wasn`t wearing a Gestapoesque hat like some of the officers - he _guessed_ they were officers - so that made hiding his identity a bit more troublesome. The answer to this?   
  
Make sure to stick to the darkest places possible. The entire Whale King was kept pretty well lit but there were limits in any massive Zoid`s convenience for crew - and those limits were where the benefits started for intruders. In this case, it was the poorly lit areas like the brig, or hallways that only served the purpose of exposing pipes and circuitry for repair, or those rarely visited rooms and passageways like the cargo holds.   
  
Currently, he`d settled quite nicely into one of those same cargo holds, having found himself a strangely useful seat on a steel beam just a few feet under the ceiling, just out of the direct line of sight for anyone coming in and just wide enough to hide his thin body if he laid on his side and they looked up. The air was unmoving, stiff and lacked any real smell to it other than what smelled oddly like one of the chemicals used by most modern military to store just about everything, mainly since this particular chemical was designed to eat away at the specific molecular formula that was responsible for dust. Kill the dust, you kill any insects that eat it.   
  
He could tell this particular chemical wasn`t used for food or clothing because it lacked the side-stench that came with human-friendly pesticides. That meant - judging by the size of the crates that were stacked just a few feet shy of the girter he was sitting on - that this was an ammo hold or a gun storage room. If either were correct, that would make his day a _whole_ lot easier.   
  
_ "To check now, or to wait until a lackey comes and leaves?"_ He asked himself, wondering when someone would periodically check up on ammunition, which was standard procedure in just about any military or paramilitary force.   
  
_ "Should`ve found a food room,"_ he thought to himself upon deciding to wait it out, giving off a sigh and laying his head down onto the bend of his elbow. Better safe than sorry, right?   
  
  
"Slow down!" Leon yelled out, his voice packing all the authority of a general at war. The evacuation was proceeding at a remarkably smooth pace, even though it was fracturing more families than he wanted to think. At present, he was standing at the right side of the forward edge of the Empress Heart`s jaw, positioned atop an empty ammo crate that was some twelve or thirteen feet tall, holding a portable loudspeaker in one hand and a jury-rigged walkie talkie-styled communicator in the other.   
  
It was just an example of what people like Leyon and his father could come up with in thirty seconds of boredom. There were ten of them already, thrown together out of misc cell phone parts and a few stereos, connected on an newly-created frequency(courtesy of Naomi, actually. Few people could ever guess it, but the Gunsniper pilot was a fairly skilled communications specialist) to the Whale King`s main network. Each had about a half a mile for range and were perfect for holding a short-distance conference call, even through the armored hull of the Empress Heart.   
  
"Once inside, await further instructions! Do _not_ touch the Zoids and avoid any ordnance, if you find any problems, report them to a speakerphone - but _only_ if they`re severe! If you have any experience in the military, feel free to head to elevator three and report to the bridge! If you have any experience as a doctor, do the same!" He continued shouting, much to the amusement of several people on the bridge of the Whale King, chief among them being Sarah Obscura.   
  
Over the course of the past hours, she had increasingly come to the forefront, having more experience with people and manipulating, leading, comforting and keeping them in order than any of the others put together. She was effectively the brains of the operation thus far, and for someone who had once longed to hold the reigns of power in another group, and in another time, it was quite a refreshing change. Not so refreshing were the change in clothes - she`d only had time to switch from her prison jumpsuit to a pair of blandly grayish-colored pants and a black t-shirt under a thin, light blue jacket - but it was still good to be in control of something.   
  
As for what was amusing to her?   
  
"He`s a natural," she finally said with a shake of the head, looking away from the small monitor and glancing over at Leyon and Steven. They`d been having a regular ball with themselves, serving as the operation`s hands. When something needed to be fixed or created - like the communicators that they`d basically thrown together in under ten minutes of actual _work_ - they were the ones who did it.   
  
"That`s my boy... And that`s _my_ cup of noodles, you damn pasta fetishist!"   
  
"_**DAMNIT, I WAS THE ONE WHO COOKED `EM!**_" Leyon screamed back irately, holding the cup of steaming ramen noodles in one hand and using his other - along with a foot - to hold Steve back from stealing them.   
  
"... Hnn..." Sarah sounded, quirking a brow up and ignoring the antics of her not-so-esteemed colleagues, glancing back to the monitor and switching over to another camera. This one showed Leena, who had essentially become something of a jackette-of-all-trades. She helped where she could, if it was in just throwing more hands into a job, crowd control, checking out problems before they could become serious, even going so far as to help move most of the Zoids onto the HoverCargo and out of the hangar - with the aid of Naomi`s Gustav, of course.   
  
The scarred girl was rapidly growing up and maturing quite nicely, in Sarah`s eyes, changing from a spoiled brat to a hands-on anchor to reality for just about everyone she spoke to. Another switch of the camera view, Sarah observed the other of the two most recent additions to the misfit crew that was manning the Empress Heart.   
  
Naomi Fluegel was playing the part of dedicated crowd control, standing on the crate at the opposite side of the Whale King`s jaw to Leon, holding an assault rifle in the classic ready-to-aim stance of a peacekeeping soldier, having kept the weapon neatly concealed in the floor of her Gustav, right in front of the back seat. She`d also opted out for a change in clothing, switching from her former outfit to a pair of black, tight pants with a pair of red stripes running along the outer side of each leg, along with a matching, sleeveless top. She wasn`t going for style, she was going for intimidation, and that was about the most intimidating outfit she`d had readily available.   
  
Not that an assault rifle being held by one of the most accurate gunfighters alive wasn`t intimidating enough, as is, but she was still going for that extra 'umph,' so to speak.   
  
"Keep `em coming! Slowly, if you get seperated from family or friends, step off to the side and wait for them, if that fails, we`ll just have to improvise a loudspeaker and pick a spot to bring you back together! Stay calm, keep moving..."   
  
_ "Repetitive, isn`t he?"_ Naomi droned in thought, reaching up and brushing an errant strand of hair out of her face, then dropping her hand back down onto the stock of the weapon, looking ever ready to blow someone`s brains out on a moment`s notice. She didn`t _want_ to, of course, but she was ready to do so, all the same. Despite it`s slow pacing though, the evacuation continued onward without pause or delay, slowly inching towards it`s end.   
  
  
"We`re here," Paul announced tiredly, slowing down as the Gustav rumbled it`s way onto the road from the barren dirt around it, moving smoothly now as he shifted into the right lanes. Drake only barely stirred, having spent the majority of the trip either asleep or asking questions about the chaos that was currently wracking the planet, or why his big sister had been taken in by the authorities when Zoid battles were _supposed_ to be at least a _little_ on the violent side. Unusually perceptive yet still incredibly naive, just like any four year old.   
  
Bitter irony that Drake`s birthday had been the first day after the beginning of the apocalypse.   
  
"I`ll wake you up later then," Paul said, more to himself than his son. Pressing the brakes a bit more, the gray Gustav completely slowed down the rest of the way, halting just a few feet from the makeshift barrier at the edge of Farentown.   
  
"Identify yourself or the newbie blows your heads off," a fairly stern voice ordered with all the grace of a half-dead animal that had been awake for _far_ too long.   
  
"I`m not a newbie, you fucking chin-whore."   
  
"Eat me, newb," the first voice growled back at the supposed interrupter as Paul sized up the two Zoids that were responsible for maintaining guard over this particular inroad. He recognized both clearly after several seconds, identifying the first as the Shadow Fox - Blitz Team member, Brad Hunter`s old Zoid, currently belonging to a rookie lunatic by the name of Marcus Harlock, one half of the Suicide Team. That meant the other Zoid, a Blade Liger which was a bit larger than the one used by Leon Tauros, was the Ivory Blade Liger, Kyle Mazemia`s Zoid and the other half of the Suicide Team.   
  
Absently, the huge man twitched one eyelid and spoke up.   
  
"I`d like to enter already, I`ve been travelling with my son for two days to get here."   
  
"... Pfah, let `im in," Mark grumbled.   
  
"He could be a spy though," Kyle retorted, levelling his dual impact cannon on the Gustav`s cockpit. Mark was less than enthused.   
  
"True, true... I guess there`s only one way to find out," he mumbled, trying to think of something to use.   
  
"_No_, I don`t have anal warts, my mother is dead and no old men touched me inappropriately when I was a child, can I come in now?" Paul groaned out, having obviously been paying attention to the five day festival of insanity that had been the Suicide Days.   
  
"... You didn`t say anything about your dog though, which means..." Mark snorted. "You sick bastard! _**LEAVE THE POODLE ALONE! PUT DOWN TH-**_" "Just let the guy in," Kyle interrupted with a dry tone.   
  
"Riiiight... Thank you," Paul mumbled out sardonically as the roadblock opened, allowing him to pull past the two arguing members of the Suicide Team and continue into the city.   
  
"**_I`M TELLING YOU, HE HAD A POODLE FETISH!_**"   
  
"You have a sick, sick mind, my friend."   
  
"I`m not the one who taped six hours of 'All My Organoids.'"   
  
"**_SHUT UP! I DID THAT FOR MY GIRLFRIEND!_**"   
  
"Yes, and I bet you got sodomized by a popcorn bowl for her too, huh?"   
  
"... You f-" "And let`s not forget your passing obsession with toaster ovens! Whoooo boy..."   
  
"I hate you."   
  
"You`re a bishounen. On top of that, you`re a good guy. You _can`t_ hate me. It`s not possible. You either love everything and everyone or you`re apathetic about everything and everyone _but_ your nemesis!"   
  
"... Oh fuck you, you _are_ my nemesis!"   
  
"... Then I`m putting on a few hundred pounds and growing a beard to avoid the underaged, sex-obsessed, angstful, gay-romance oriented fangirls. And the underaged, sex-obsessed, angstful, gay-romance oriented fan_boys_ too, for that matter."   
  
"You _would_..."   
  
"Unlike you, _I`m_ faithful to my girlfriend and proud of it."   
  
"Trists with a blender don`t count as unfaithful!"   
  
"I do _not_ wanna know where that came from..."   
  
"Bah."   
  
"Meh. Peon."   
  
"Newbie."   
  
"Cheesefucker."   
  
"Lambchop."   
  
"Lambchop?"   
  
"_Lambchop_."   
  
"That is just _wrong_ on _so_ many levels," Mark said with a sickly expression.   
  
"But so very correct at the same time," Kyle retorted, finally having won one from the looks of things.   
  
  
At age thirty-one, Susan Turpscavey was what most people would call a career bitch. Those who worked beneath her were kept in strict discipline, enforced by the fact that she wasn`t above carrying out punishments herself - and at the same time, she tended to get down in the trenches and share their grit, pain and just about everything else with them. It broke them and it endeared them, she was a harsh task master but they at _least_ liked her for it. If they didn`t, she`d`ve been executed in a mutiny by now.   
  
A bit on the tall side for a woman, she also lacked much in the way of femininity. If she`d bothered with things like make-up or hair dyes or had bothered with plastic surgery, she would`ve been an absolute knockout. She didn`t care enough to bother with that, about the only things she really did care for were her crew and her job. Anything else was expendable.   
  
A burst of green light next to her reminded her though, that her job involved a good many things other than pirating or taking prisoners, though the insanely large construct in front of her could`ve done about the same with ease. The Hellwalker, one of two immensely powerful Zoids developed over the past years, but it was conveniently half-shrouded in shadow, especially around it`s large head. Only sparks could be seen around that area, where welders and the like were still working on the enormous killing machine.   
  
"I take it you`ve come to see me about this... Changeover, you`ve got intended for me?" She asked with the air of a professional, utterly unphased by the extremely unconventional way that her employer got around, receiving only a quiet 'yes' in reply, followed by the low rumbling of the Organoid that almost always accompanied him around.   
  
Spectacle stood tall after a moment or so of creeping around, looming protectively over the form of the snappily dressed Vilhelm Rommel. As world destroying villains went though, the Organoid was about all that Vilhelm had in common with those who had come before him, at least as far as appearances went. Where Gunther Prozen had typically worn a rather odd long coat of armor and a red bodysuit underneath, and where Hiltz had worn some odd concoction that looked like a bondage halloween costume, Vilhelm favored more practical clothes.   
  
In his case, it was a black business suit with an emerald green undershirt worn beneath it, projecting an air of sophistication and class _with_ his evil, rather than paranoia or a horrible taste in clothing. As an aside, only one or two people other than himself knew that the business suit was made of an extremely durable, lightweight and flexible variation of kevlar, or that Vilhelm was carrying two custom-made Magnum-styled handguns capable of blowing holes in people`s chests with ease. He may have been stylish, but he had _teeth_.   
  
"I believe you`ll like the change, actually. Your crew will be going with you," he stated calmly, stepping up to the safety rail of the catwalk that the two were perched on, with Spectacle still standing attentively behind him.   
  
"To this?" She asked, still as professional as ever, her hands placed on the rail as she regarded the Hellwalker once again, what little she could actually see of it, anyway. A dark red overshadowed by a mostly green body, easily big enough to level a city even without the arsenal she knew was going to be placed onto it.   
  
"To this? No, I have something else in mind. The Hellwalker is intended for... Someone else," he cryptically answered. "Besides, it`s a one-person crew, while the Black Ultra is intended to operate with the full staff of a Whale King," he added as an afterthought, knowing to sprinkle in just enough information to get the captain even more interested than she already was.   
  
"I see. Who`s the lucky contender?" She asked again, playing a dangerous game of prying for information with one of the best manipulators on the face of the planet, and receiving only a stinging defeat in the form of a chuckle a second later.   
  
"Wouldn`t _you_ like to know?" He asked with a smile, and Susan felt her blood run cold.   
  
  
A dull rumble filled the almost empty room that was filled with several tables and several chairs, the door marked on both sides with 'Command Staff Only,' with several water coolers, a canned drink machine, two coffee makers, a fridge and a stove sitting off to the side, though it`s three occupants weren`t even close to sitting at any of the tables.   
  
The dull rumble was the sound of the Empress Heart`s engines burning to life, the three occupants were the overworked trio of Naomi Fluegel, Leon and Leena Tauros, the older two standing and the younger third sitting on a chair that had been hijacked from one of the tables. Naomi was sipping water, Leon had downed what was probably his fiftieth cup of coffee in however many hours it had taken to complete preparations for the evacuation - including protests from the local Guardians. They`d all felt that at least a _few_ more Zoids and pilots were needed for it, and eventually, they`d gotten their way to an extent, since the Pteras group that had formerly been patrolling the local airspace had swiped some space in the main hangar, forcing the crowded evacuees to spread out from within and start occupying the actual 'guts' of the Whale King, moving wherever they were allowed.   
  
It had only a skeleton crew, still, but that wasn`t the reason for the particularly dreary feeling that had overcome the three people who were currently watching the airport at Romeo City start to get progressively smaller over the course of several seconds, eventually vanishing from sight and leaving the trio to watch the rest of the cityscape for a few seconds before the huge aircraft turned and veered away, hovering still for a while longer.   
  
"Am I the only one who feels like we`re never going to see Romeo City again?" Leon asked, voicing the thoughts of all three at once, his restrained doubt speaking volumes.   
  
"Preach on, brother," Naomi shrugged, sipping a small bit off of what was left of her cup. Leena just groaned and nodded in agreement with her - former? - rival. It was unclear as to whether or not either of the two really saw each other as foes anymore, the end of civilization as everyone knew it was something that could blur a hostile relationship _very_ fast.   
  
The low rumble of the engines shifted, smoothing out as the Empress Heart began to accelerate, picking up speed and ascending away from Romeo City on a straight line for what everyone still believed to be Garnhelm Base, though it was now nothing more than blood stained rubble, _at best_. None of those onboard could really know just how lucky they were that Leena had insisted on making with the evacuation, but they would all find out soon enough that the delays had saved their lives.   
  
  
As for Kale and Shadow?   
  
A fell streak of death warmed over lit through the night sky over a mountainside far from the reaches of normal civilization. The mountain in question was known as Horus, it bore only a single, timid looking log cabin that had been around for close to a hundred years in the possession of three or four families, most recently coming into the care of the Obscura family. It was a bitter irony on both sides that one brother flew through low orbit laughing maniacally while the other lay, unconscious in his bed.   
  
His injuries were still healing, he was hidden partially beneath the covers and the only thing that had kept him from awaking in the need to use the bathroom, eat or drink something was the Organoid that had constantly kept an eye on him even now, days after the bloodshed that had almost killed him. It was beyond maternal, a bond between the boy and the Organoid that so diligently tended to him, 'feeding' him energy, mending his wounds with it and keeping his body alive, allowing his mind to recover from the trauma he`d endured.   
  
Outside was another brutally injured victim of battle, but this one was different. It was the Razorwind Fury, no longer charred black and no longer on the verge of 'stoning over,' yet it still looked like Hell. It`s lasersaws were missing still, though they were slowly growing back, and a hole remained in it`s chest armor, though beneath the Razorwind armor itself, the actual _Fury_ was almost completely 'healed,' bar a few small bits of damage here and there, mostly involving burn marks and the like. Despite their seeming animosity for one another, Zeke had obviously done more than keep the Fury alive, it wouldn`t have been as repaired by now otherwise.   
  
Softly, Vega attempted to stir, unknowing that it was the exact moment that Kale and Shadow vanished over the horizon, unknowing of where he was and unknowing of virtually everything in general in his present state. Even softer though, Specular nudged him back down mentally, easing his dreamscape back to a more pleasant condition and continuing to watch over him like a hawk in the dull light of the evening.   
  
  
"Well, what do we do now?" Lars asked as the Foe Hammer drifted back up from the road that ran through the fairly suburban neighborhood that Dana Masterson`s family called home, thankfully finding that her house had still been occupied - by the people she was looking for no less. That still left the two remaining members of Vega`s crew without a goal though, and with nothing for them to do, all that was really left was to fly around aimlessly.   
  
At least that was what Lars figured.   
  
"I`m going to Farentown," Katherine stated bluntly, even as Lars turned the Hammerhead II up to full speed and blazed off at a _very_ unhealthy altitude of only a few hundred feet - which was a suitably _bad_ thing in a city that was filled with high rise buildings like Romeo City, especially not when everone was as on-edge as they were. Regardless though, he managed to get them clear without causing local defenders to open fire or anything.   
  
"What about you?" She asked after a few seconds, sparing a glance towards the geek with an eyebrow raised, only to watch him shrug. "I haven`t got any family left since Al died, so... Guess I`ll just go to Mount Horus and check to see if Vega`s there or something," he said without putting much thought into it, or looking at Katherine for that matter. Lars was one of those weirdoes who preferred hanging around Zoids rather than people, if only because he was also a staunch computer addict as well and often found his talents especially useful in that area.   
  
"Why ya headed to Farentown?"   
  
"Kyle," she answered automatically, lighting up a smoke with a bit of a whistful look on her face.   
  
"I got a bad feeling you might regret that," Lars mumbled, more to himself than to Katherine, knowing that she was too engrossed in her own thoughts to even pay attention to him anymore.   
  
  
A loud, almost colossal explosion roared through what had been an area already devoid of calm and peace. Silence was a foriegn term here, replaced by the constant rumblings of as many volcanic mountains as could possibly be crammed onto one continent. Crystals the size of city blocks stretched into his view, ranging from clean, pristine blue to tainted off-white, each shimmering dimly in the eternal sunset that seemed to dominate the area. The very _air_ was choked and hard to breathe, leaving him to cough several times upon realization that he was no longer in the Liger Zero, which happened to boast an air filtration system.   
  
It also had climate control.   
  
Bit Cloud would`ve liked climate control right about now.   
  
That was because ice sickles were now starting to dangle off of his nose and bangs, leaving him to cringe inwardly and shiver to try and warm himself, while at the same time, the air was so hot and muggy that it probably could`ve been compared to a rain forest on the equator. Snow covered the ground, inches deep and yet it was covered at various points by ash, and the sky itself was black and cloudy, leaving only the horizon visible in either direction and placing the entire continent into a near perpetual twilight - permanent afternoon followed by permanent morning.   
  
"Where the _Hell_ am I?!" He demanded, flinging his arms up around himself in a vain attempt to get warm while at the same time time trying to avoid a heat stroke. The climate probably would`ve shocked most people into dying in a matter of seconds, he had been here for at least an hour.   
  
"Welcome to Nyx, Three. Or should I start calling you Bit Cloud now?" A voice asked from behind, and he whipped around to view it. What he saw was discomforting to say the least.   
  
A woman his own height stood before him now, and though she didn`t hold the appearance of a bodybuilder, she still looked like she was muscular enough to level him with one arm - nevermind the huge club that was haphazardly swung over one shoulder like a baseball bat. A leather tunic shirt over a black bodysuit, somewhat grimy but that was to be expected with the climate they were in, long, spikey black hair and eerily familiar pinkish-red eyes, weathered by experience and skill if not by age. 

"You`re not human," he pointed out almost instantly, making the connection due to the woman`s eyes. Behind her towered a gigantic Zoid of some kind, it looked like a cross between an eagle or a falcon and a lion, and sat almost mockingly like a housecat, with the Liger Zero standing next to it. Even when sitting down though, it dwarfed the nearby Ultimate X, which was standing at it`s full height and only managed to come up to the other Zoid`s shoulder, _at best_.   
  
"Neither are you," she replied calmly, unmoving, unblinking and unyielding.   
  
"What do you want?" Bit asked, knowing that there _had_ to be a reason for him to be dragged out to a continent he had only heard of in sparse geology and mythology classes, or the few words Fiona had given to him about it. At that thought, she motioned, with her club, to the enormous hill that rose up like the outside of a tunnel not too far below them, causing Bit to realize - finally - that he stood atop an elevated, isolated plateau of land, looking down at a sprawling city of some kind, ancient and lifeless, only scant details and a faint glow at it`s epicenter seeming to stand out. Not too far away though, was an even larger base, contained within what looked like an oversized dome of metal that had been scolded black through countless impacts from burning debris and lava flows.   
  
The tunnel drew his attention the most though, it must have been some sort of transit system but the size of it was unbelievable for him - who needed a subway train that was as wide and tall as a Whale King was long?   
  
The woman snapped him back out of his jumbled thoughts though, speaking up with authority.   
  
"It`s not what _I_ want, Bit Cloud, it`s what _you have_ to do," she said, pointing her club right at him and literally flash-burning a mental replay into his thoughts.   
  
** [**_"Do you know... How I`m going to kill you? First... I`m going to teach you fear. The kind of fear that you can`t escape from. Then, I`m going to finish teaching you pain. The kind that you can`t think through. Then, I`m going to slowly kill everyone you hold dear. And then, finally, I`m going to kill you."_**]**   
  
"You have a decision to make," she grittily spoke out, even as the vision of the Geno Maxis all but annihilating he and the Liger in the previous battle brought him to his knees in a mix of emotions so complex that it would`ve taken hours to sort them out, one by one.   
  
"Get... Outta my head," he growled out in reply, finding only a passive decrease in the intensity of the vision, just so that he was able to _think_, not that he really _wanted_ to think, but still.   
  
"_You_ stand at a fork in the road, Bit. You will know fear, you will know pain, you will know suffering and you will _die_, or you will know it all, still, and find victory and life."   
  
"I have _people to save_, you _bitch_!" He shouted, still unable to even try to move as his reality distorted itself, his eyes going blind and the vision in his mind intensifying again, bringing with it fear, fear of what he didn`t understand and with that fear, the pain of both inadequacy and the pain of his mind wracking itself to try and make up for it.   
  
"Yes," she responded. "You _do_ have people to save. But _not yet_. The decision you must make will determine your own fate, Bit Cloud, we are putting this into your hands now," she added, and with her words, the vision changed, from infinite repeats of Kale and Shadow beating he and Zeke to a visual of the entire planet. It hurt his head just to try and think, and he didn`t _want_ to think in the first place but he really had no choice in the matter.   
  
"What the _fuck_ kinda decision is this?!" He demanded, temporarily-blind eyes narrowed angrily at a seeming foe he could no longer see. Zi continued to rotate though, in the vision he was having, even as an unearthly echo filtered into the 'ears' of his thoughts, jabbing down into every single fiber of his being with infinitely more force than even that of the Geno Maxis, sounding like the twisted combination of a Whale King, a lion, the Fury, the Liger Zero and many more loud predators that he didn`t even know existed, joined together in wicked harmony as a pair of red shifts began to fade into view, slowly but surely, to either side of the planet.   
  
"The kind where the fates of worlds hang in the balance," she answered, voice calm and steady as the flow of a river, yet underlined with an intensity that made his entire body tremble even more than the cold was causing. "Will you take the burden we present you? The burden of the Guardians? Or will you foolishly run off to get yourself slaughtered in a vain attempt to protect those you care for, only to find that you can`t do anything?"   
  
"**_GET OUTTA MY FUCKING HEAD, WOMAN! I HAVE TO HELP THEM NOW OR THEY`LL ALL DIE!_**"   
  
The shifts took shape. They were slanted, like tilted diamonds, glowing eerily with a red tint that matched the color of blood even more so than those of the Maxis, regarding the planet like a dying calf in the eyes of a starved wolf.   
  
"And if you run off to try and save them without being prepared, they _will_ die, regardless. Now, **_ANSWER ME!_**" She demanded in kind, her voice seeming to thunder over his own, doubling and tripling with the same kind of choir-effect that permeated the true Voices of Organoids. The eyes glowed brighter though, the sound rumbled and screeched out again, rattling him further.   
  
"You will know pain, you will know fear, you will know suffering in _either_ choice, but will you choose death and defeat or life and _victory_? _Choose now_!"   
  
The vision ended on a sickening note, his site returned and he was left to scream out in shock at what little he managed to see of the oceans turning red, the continents vanishing into explosions and the thin line of blackness that trailed around the world like a malevolent, plaguing laughter, echoing into his core and embedding itself there.   
  
And then he was able to see again. His eyes stung with something - moisture or just the local atmosphere, he wasn`t sure - and the ice that hung from his face was also hanging from other parts of his body, only to periodically melt with gusts of hot air, while his knees and hands had sunken into the black-choked snow, leaving him to slowly look up to meet those pinkish-red eyes and cringe like an animal.   
  
"Well?" She asked, calm again as if it hadn`t even been her who had ordered him to give his answer, though her eyes were still narrowed. His answer wasn`t his own, and he spoke with a Voice that he didn`t truly possess, because _he_ wasn`t the only one speaking, nor had he been the only one facing a vision of some nightmare while being given a question with the fate of the world hanging on it`s answer.   
  
_ "_Yes,_"_ he said, his voice coming out with the same choir effect of an Organoid as Zeke replied with the same answer at the same moment, leaving the woman and the colossal creature behind her to exchange a glance with each other. Only then, did Bit realize that the Liger was getting to it`s feet unsteadily from something, rumbling out with confusion at what had just happened.   
  
Impassively, she turned back toward him, finally making the motions of introducing herself, the Organoid and giving an explanation - however vague it was.   
  
"My name is Madison Rose. I am a Guardian. The Organoid behind me is Roc. He is the First One. We are also your new teachers."   
  
He would have asked what she`d meant by that, just as Zeke would have asked what the question had meant, but both were pre-emptively silenced in a blaze of plasma and a single swift strike of a club, causing even more explosions to ring through the already chaotic Hell of their exclusive retreat...   
  
_

End Chapter Fourteen

_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Hope the chapter didn`t suck. I had **major** writer`s block with it, and I was half-asleep while writing this last part, so it didn`t turn out as I`d wanted it. I`ll probably rewrite the last scene when I put ROC up on my site, but... Bleh. And as an aside: Do **not** expect me to churn out chapters every two to three days like I usually do, I`ve got an influx of work(both schoolwork and writing) that I have to complete, but I **will** finish this story. Do **NOT** pester me about when the next chapter is up. That doesn`t exactly help someone who naturally hauls ass through working on something.  
  
**Illidan:** Think the Maxis is bad? I haven`t even gotten **started** yet.  
  
**Arcane:** Glad you enjoy it. Anything ya like in particular?  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Kale and Shadow may have made a mistake but... Somehow, I highly **doubt** it`ll ever really haunt them. Glad you enjoyed the Maxis, by the way.  
  
**Engar:** Kale may not attack anyone for a while, actually. He`s more or less playing a slow game of cat and mouse and laughing his head off the entire time, Shadow is just out to kill **everything** and the Maxis... Well... You get the idea.  
  
**DJ Wolfwood:** *Sweatdrop.* >_>; Yeah, well, if you do - I`ll personally send you a review as a disclaimer saying you created Jesse, in case some twit tries flaming you for it or anything.   
  
**The Big Fisch:** Yes, lighthearted is virtually impossible right now, but I do try from time to time. Mark and Kyle are odd characters, you`ll see some of their mutual serious side eventually, though probably sooner than **I** think... *Trying like hell to slow things down a bit.*  
  
That`s all for now folks, Sh33p out. Leave a review, enjoy and see ya next time! 


	15. Learning Curve

  
  
**Foreword:** Only song I`m advocating is Adam Sandler`s 'Ode to my car.' You`ll know when to play it, trust me.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Learning Curve  
  
  
  


Two days ago, Bit Cloud had arrived to a part of Zi that essentially represented every single natural disaster that could possibly happen anywhere on the face of the planet. The place was known as Nyx, it could`ve been called Hell but instead it was called Nyx. It`s name was a death threat in the tongue of the Ancient Zoidians and if he had known that fact, he would`ve easily seen _why_ it was a death threat. Nyx suffered from a combination of constant, icy floods happened at least twice daily, while massive glaciers running rampant over disgustingly hot lava flows produced steam clouds hot enough to burn one`s skin right off, and smog blotted out the sky, while the position of Nyx on the globe meant that it was a constant winter that required heavy, arctic-style clothing, while at the same time, all of the lava and the energy released by countless tons of anomolous crystals meant that the temperature was also sweltering.   
  
The very atmosphere of the place could kill a full grown human male in a matter of minutes. How he had survived this long - let alone come to adapt to it as he was doing, without food or water - was beyond him. His body ached, his mind raced and his heart was pounding, while the Handleblade`s grip gouged lightly into the small of his back from where it was holstered. It had been like this every hour of the past two days, he would get a few minutes to rest, sleep or climb into the cockpit of the Liger for some filtered, easily breathed oxygen, and then he would get dragged back out.   
  
Even Zeke was having trouble keeping up, because while Bit had been getting repeatedly beaten in by this 'Madison Rose' woman, Zeke had been going through round after round of combat with Roc. Both of them constantly wound up humiliated.   
  
Simply put: Against a foe such as Leon Tauros, who had virtually matched off with him on a relatively level playing field, Bit could win. Not easily, but he could, with or without luck, with or without help and with or without an armor conversion. Against a foe like Vega Obscura, whom Bit had been reasonably outclassed by, he could win. Not easily, not without a _massive_ amount of luck on his side, but Bit could still win if he fought hard enough. Against a foe like Kale Obscura, Bit was effectively screwed. Against Kale in the Geno Saurer, with his current skills, he felt he _might_ have had a good chance if he switched to Jaeger or Schneider. Against Kale in the Maxis? No way in Hell would he have won.   
  
Madison Rose, thus far, had completely humiliated him with every attack he had made. The two times that he had managed to slip by her defenses and _hit_ her, his fist actually hurt from the impact and he wound up getting knocked at least twenty or more feet into the air, the first time by her club, the second time by a solid uppercut.   
  
Both times had left him with a broken jaw and a cracked skull, which mysteriously ended up healing in under two minutes. _How_ this kept happening without error was completely past his ability to comprehend, but everytime, she would only motion at Roc and then tell him to get up.   
  
Ironically during this bout of carnage, and this occured to the weezing young man currently sitting haphazardly against an oversized rock, he had no time to think. Bit Cloud didn`t like thinking. Bit Cloud _wanted_ to think. He hated thinking when he had time for it, he wanted to when he didn`t. It was an annoying fact that dawned upon him with what few minutes he had as the Liger wandered close by, growling in what sounded like exhaustion.   
  
"You and me both..."   
  
_ If he wasn`t Roc, I`d be cussing him out right now...   
  
_ "Who the hell _are_ these two, anyway?" Bit asked with a wheeze, waving away a gust of ash-carrying air, the stench of brimstone rotting it`s way into his nostrils.   
  
_ Madison is the Guardian. The Zoidian woman selected every first generation in a two-part cycle by the First Born to try and guard against the very ideological shifts that caused their eventual extinction_, Zeke answered, essentially summarizing everything in the least detailed manner he could think of.   
  
"First Born?"   
  
_ Bit, if I tried to explain **all** of this to you in detail, you would die an old man by the time I finished. Given that you`re hopefully going to live to the ripe old of a hundred or more, that should tell you something, don`t you think?   
  
_ "... Point taken. One question though..."   
  
_ Yes, Roc is the First Born, yes he is an Organoid and yes he is a Zoid. Think of him as an Ultimate X on crack, satisfied?   
  
_ "... It`ll do," he sighed, not understanding half of it but knowing what was about to happen when everything got a little louder and when his vision got a little quicker. "Here we go again," he muttered to himself, bracing a gloved hand against the rock and then pushing himself off the ground with the look of a slinky toy bouncing down the stairs. Uneasily, that same hand inched down towards the Handleblade, but Madison, impassive as ever, stopped several feet in front of him, having somehow appeared out of nowhere - at least to Bit. In truth, she`d been in front of him the entire time, he was just too distracted to notice.   
  
"Don`t bother, I`m not here to continue teaching you how to focus in a battle," she stated, her voice setting him on edge even as he gripped the weapon anyway, eyes narrowed. "I`m here to give you an assignment," she said with the neutral tone of voice that could be expected of a teacher unenthusiastically delivering a pop quiz in the middle of their own lunch.   
  
"An assignment?"   
  
"Take a look off the edge of the plateau, you`ll spot a domed facility in the distance," she began, continuing before he could try and interrupt with a question. "The place is named Iron Eye, it`s a combination of a full fledged military base, a science facility, Zoid factory and a prototype testing grounds for the Rommel Corporation`s... Experiments."   
  
"Experiments?" Bit was finally allowed to ask, glancing at what little he could see of the huge dome that was only barely visible from where he was standing. Madison was as neutral, apathetic and blunt as ever.   
  
"Geno Saurer variations, mainly, but also other Zoids," she stated, causing his heart to skip a beat.   
  
"How the hell did they get Geno Saurers? The only ones that`ve ever been confirmed are-" "Kale`s Geno Maxis, Vega`s Berserk Fury and three Zoids which you`ve conveniently forgotten the fates of."   
  
"Kale destroyed them though..."   
  
"He killed the pilots, but enough of the Zoids remained for repairs after scavengers found them," she explained. "Rommel tracked down the scavengers, had them killed and took what was left of the half-salvaged Geno Saurers for his own organization-" "- and then repaired them and started modifying and copying the design for his own..." Bit finished with a visible twitch and a slap across his own face.   
  
"They haven`t managed to truly copy the design, but they _have_ managed to modify the ones that are in their possession," Madison clarified plainly before another Voice joined in, loud to the thoughts but inaudible to the ears. It boomed and shattered Bit`s concentration so utterly that for a moment, he couldn`t even _think_ to realize that something was speaking.   
  
**_ Today_ is the day that they begin testing one of the mutations**, Roc`s loud Voice quieted considerably after the first word, but it remained utterly inescapable, leaving Bit`s eyes to roll around briefly before he shook away the dizziness it caused. **The Proto Breaker.**   
  
  
Marshall Davis. Age thirty-one, Guylos-born, Republican immigrant. Black hair, lanky build, somewhat short and green eyed, he wasn`t much to look at but he was an ace mercenary, having been on the Rommel payroll for close to three years. The man had no morals, his only concerns were himself and his job, his Zoid came after that and everything else was utterly expendable. Known for being a bit of a sarcastic punk, Davis had a reputation of infamy for going into combat while blaring his own choice of hard rock/rap music, disregarding direct orders and even shooting his own team mates if they got in the way. Considered by far to be one of the least professional pilots in living memory, his skills were only rivaled by his ability to verbally assault people to the extent of personal ruin and get away with it scott-free.   
  
Today, Marshall Davis was absently switching the batteries of his headphones while sitting awkwardly in the cockpit of his new Zoid. Yes, _his_ new Zoid. No one else. This Zoid was his current paycheck, allowing him to sell off his old Gunsniper to anyone who wanted it. Eerily enough, the controls of his new Zoid almost mirrored the custom setup of the Gunsniper he had formerly piloted, right down to having guns in almost all of the same places, though it would take a bit of getting used to for all of the visual setups and the fact that the cockpit was in the chest.   
  
One leg draped out lazily over the forward panel, the cockpit itself - or the 'guts' of it, anyway - had been slid down along the elevator rail to sit a few inches off of the polished metal floor, leaving him to lazily regard the rest of the enormous hangar. Prototype Ligers, Foxes, Wolves, Kongs, aerial Zoids, at least two Lions and three Geno Saurers littered the huge, well lit area. Any normal mercenary would`ve been looking for something to steal, but Davis?   
  
Davis had what he wanted. No point in bothering with anything else.   
  
"Lounging around, as always?" A decidedly less lazy voice asked from the right. Davis responded in kind, flipping the headphones up and behind his head before sliding them down to rest around his neck for the time being, the cord running down to the small CD player that was being tucked into the front right pocket of his flight suit. "Fuck off."   
  
Obviously, Marshall wasn`t well known for having a lot of patience with people, or having very controlled language.   
  
"Aren`t you pleasant?" The visitor asked, glancing up at the Proto Breaker with only passing interest. At twenty-seven, Mary Sandler was the 'middle-pilot' in the trio of the Geno Test Pilots. Not the oldest, not the youngest and obviously the only woman. She was also the most precise, able to hollow out a dime at a quarter of a mile with nothing but her own eyes and a revolver. Dubbed 'Sureshot' by more than a few of her previous employers, the tall, figure-lacking brunette didn`t have the kind of the reputations carried by greats like Eric Johnson or the Red Comet, Naomi Fluegel, but then again, neither of them were underworld assassins who`d worked for the likes of the Backdraft Group to silence potentially dangerous critics or off suspicious personnel who seemed a bit too adept at avoiding legitimate search efforts and were too good when it came to piloting a Zoid to be left alive.   
  
Sandler had even less morals than Davis, she would`ve shot her own mother if paid highly enough. Like Davis, her price was _high_, but unlike her foul mouthed colleague, her price wasn`t a Zoid, it was the whereabouts to several of her former employers who`d failed to pay their debts properly. That and more credits(the standard international currency) than the average Class S Zoid Team would ever see in it`s entire career.   
  
"Get some tits and maybe I would be," Marshall finally muttered out, only to realize all of a quarter of a second too late that his words had been a _very_ bad mistake. Mary Sandler always carried at _least_ one handgun on her at all times, easily accessable no matter what she was wearing. At present, the casual look of her sloppy looking leather jacket, white t-shirt and jeans did good to conceal the polished, silver magnum handgun that she carried in an inside holster on the right side of her jacket, the barrel of which was promptly driven into the slacker`s right temple.   
  
"Apologize or your brain becomes abstract art smeared on the floor," she ordered bluntly, possessing all of the sophistication of a pit bull. With rabies.   
  
"Kill me and ya prob`ly won`t make it outta here alive," Marshall replied quite calmly, reaching into his flight suit`s other front pocket and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.   
  
A second passed and a gunshot rang out.   
  
Sureshot wandered off into the hangar, idly flipping her handgun around on her middle finger, which was conveniently pointed in the direction of one _freaked out_-looking Marshall Davis, whose thin mustache was no gone from how close the bullet had been. She had literally shaved him. With a handgun.   
  
"Fucking _psycho_..." He mumbled to himself under his breath, looking as though someone had just smacked him in the groin with a baseball bat.   
  
  
"I still... Just... Cannot believe this..." Leena Tauros said to herself for the umpteenth time in seven hours. The Empress Heart had arrived almost fifteen hours ago, but she had been asleep or trying to for the majority of the first eight hours, and had only bothered looking outside in the past seven hours. A month or two ago, Leena had thought she`d seen the worst that she`d ever behold in her lifetime, because a month or two ago, she`d been permanently scarred in more ways than one by an effortless assassin.   
  
That same assassin was responsible, for the most part, for the majority of the utter _wasteland_ that lay below the huge, hovering airship. Even at an altitude of close to a mile, the sheer devestation that the massacre had caused was visible with no visual aid required, she wouldn`t have even needed her glasses to tell that something horrible had happened. The smoke at the main portion of the 'battlefield' had died down to mere whisps compared to the choking black cloud that had been belched up previously, a glassed-over, bowl-shaped crater sat not too far from the main killing field and the still-burning ruins of what had once been Garnhelm Base lay on the mass grave`s other side.   
  
Blood _still_ stained the ground, it had practically been burnt into the sands by the blistering sun over the past two days, burnt Zoid parts lay strewn about all over the place, some still dying Zoids were still gnashing their tarnished fangs at the air as if striking at a foe that had been gone for eons, their cockpits hauntingly shattered, some literally ripped in two where they`d been standing. Framework for at least one Whale King, and a tail piece of another, lay in a shattered, collapsed pair of heaps, the insides having been blown out and ripped away in the ensuing chaos that had claimed it.   
  
Almost invisible, but not quite, a black speck raced - almost flew - across Leena`s vision as she repeated her own words to herself once again, this time a different sentence than before: "Who the Hell could do something like this?"   
  
"Kale," came a one-worded answer from an older woman`s voice, the same older woman who came to stand next to her younger counterpart. Seperated by roughly thirty years and several severe differences in appearance, Sarah Obscura and Leena Tauros stood side by side, their postures and expressions almost mirroring one another, bar that Leena`s was a bit livelier and Sarah`s had more of a sophistication to it, while their eyes were also different. Leena`s looked, more or less, utterly shocked and upset.   
  
Sarah`s eyes were hauntingly reminiscent of her younger son`s eyes, at one time. Empty. Broken, to an extent, but still holding her head up. Above all though, a cold realization had settled into her over the past hours.   
  
Kale was beyond 'bringing back' now. Even his own _mother_ knew that now.   
  
"Only Kale could do something like this... I don`t know _how_ he did it, but I know it was him," she affirmed.   
  
"Do you think Bit and Vega made it out?" Leena asked somberly, not holding _too_ much concern for Vega, but still worrying for him, and also not holding too much _hope_ for Bit. Vega had basically redeemed himself, in her eyes, when he`d first arrived on the scene to do battle with his own older brother, and again when he`d literally thrown away his best advantage to ensure the Blitz Team`s mutual survival. Bit? Bit was a friend, but Leena didn`t think the guy was superman.   
  
As far as either of them knew, both were dead. Neither said it though, neither _wanted_ to state the obvious in this one case, so neither spoke.   
  
A heavy silence fell over the room for a number of seconds before the older woman wearily spoke, her voice seeming well beyond her forty-or-so years. "What do we do now?" She wondered aloud. Sarah had, by vote, become something of an official 'captain' of the ship, though the crew more or less took up votes on almost everything and it was an arbitrary title at best. Steven had put his faith in for her, Leyon had tossed in a vote for her out of knowledge of her ruthless ability to succeed and do it with the least damage to her own interests, Leena had followed her father`s vote, Leon had just voted for anyone who would take the job without consulting him for advice - he didn`t _run_ from duty, but it was obvious that the man needed a breather after the massive amount of stress he and so many others had gone through - and Naomi had voted for Leon.   
  
Sarah had voted for Leena, almost as a joke but not _quite_. She didn`t want the job either, but when the results came to three(or four, depending on how one calculated Leon`s vote) for her and one for either Tauros sibling...   
  
"Champton," Leena commented off the top of her head. "We should head to Champton. If Harry`s directions were right, it should be a few dozen miles northwest of Juliet City, which puts it close to the course we took to get here."   
  
"What`s in Champton?" Sarah asked, weighing it against any other options she could think of.   
  
"The Champ Corporation. Possibly protection, with it. Harry`s family business is run from there, the families of the workers live in a privately operated city with a pretty major fort and a powerful shield generator built around it."   
  
"What makes you think Champton is even still standing?" The older woman questioned again. "Because," Leena began with a smirk running across her lips, which were just a bit less scarred than the rest of her for some reason.   
  
"It`d be bad for business if they bought from a competitor."   
  
  
**_ He`e we go...   
  
_** An unhinged tune played in the background, sounding vaguely like a slow reggae beat, complete with a dulled drumbeat in the background and something similar to a guitar. The music started inexplicably as a certain blue-red-and-black Organoid came tumbling out of the bushes around Wind City, thoroughly covered in mud and drenched from the light rain that had blown through the area an hour or so earlier.   
  
**_ Piece of shit life... I got a piece of shit life... This fuckin` pile of shit, I never get very far...   
  
_** Dramatic pause as the unhinged looking, mildly insane Organoid started slowly performing a one piece congo line towards the city limits, now within twenty feet of it`s goal, though every tap of the foot and motion of the hand slowed it down a bit.   
  
**_ My life`s a big piece of shit, `cause my friends are fucking shot... And my wiring`s fucking broken, I got to tie `em in a knot(it`s a piece of shit!)...   
  
_** Another pause, the music halted and the Organoid growled irately and contorted it`s neck at an impossible angle until an audible ***CRACK*** echoed around in the no-longer silent area of the outskirts of the newly burning Wind City. People ran around in terror, explosions wracked several buildings and a Helcat flashed overhead at full speed, followed by another Helcat a second later. The tune then restarted. Don`t ask how this music was playing, Borealis tended to ignore the laws of physics at every chance he got. Not to mention the laws of relative sanity...   
  
**_ I can`t see through my reality, `cause it`s got a fucking crack... And my interior smells real bad, `cause my friend puked in my back(it`s a piece of shit!)...   
  
_** A screaming little girl ran up, stopped, stared blankly and then screamed again as Borealis continued doing his dance, somehow mimicking six back-up voices at once while whipping around and moonwalking dramatically into the city.   
  
**_ Piece of shit life... I got a piece of shit life(it`s a piece of shit!)... It sucks royal dick(that fuckin` pile of shit!)! 100% crap!(He never gets very far...) Oh fuck you, life...   
  
_** Again, he whipped around, idly ignorant to the amount of rampant death and destruction, his tune now ringing in the ears of the attacking pilots and the three or four defenders, not to mention anyone who had the misfortune of having a line of sight directly to him.   
  
**_ I got no CD player... I don`t even have an 8-track... Whoever designed my ass, can lick my sweaty nut-sack(they can bite his ass too!)... And I got no fuckin` brains, I`m always way out of control, eleven times a day I hear...   
  
_** Everything stopped and the entire city - against their will, mind you - cried out in unison as the church exploded: "**_HEY! WATCH IT ASSHOLE!!!_**"   
  
**_ You fuckin` piece of shit...   
  
_** Pause. Borealis struck a random kung-fu-styled pose before hobbling along towards the center of town on one foot and his tail, random bystanders running by and exploding from ordnance or being crushed to death by debris. The Organoid himself was completely unscathed by this.   
  
**_ Piece of shit life... I got a piece of shit life(he got a piece of shit life)... Diesel gas burns my ass(this fuckin` pile of shit)! I`m a pile of metal shit(he never gets very far)!   
  
_** Another Helcat tumbled overhead and exploded from a dozen or so plasma beams. Borealis was utterly oblivious.   
  
**_ Oh, what the fuck did I do? What the fuck did I do? What the fuck did I do, to get stuck with you, I`m too small for drive-through, and I smell like de shoe but I can`t fuckin` buy somethin` new...   
  
_** A pause. For emphasis, a Shield Liger exploded in the background.   
  
**_ Ohhhhh, fuck me!   
  
_** The singing came to a brief end as something that sounded like a guitar solo backed by several whistling sounds echoed through the area, several more people flying into the Organoid`s path - all of them on fire - as a clothing store exploded from an unguided missile.   
  
**_ Well, my Core likes to flood... My brain always fuckin` stalls... And my inside`s got a big rip, so a shard always pokes de balls(ouch ouch ouch!)...   
  
_** No longer hobbling, Borealis idly resumed his one-Organoid conga line, still utterly freaking _oblivious_ to the fact that an entire town was being massacred around him.   
  
**_ Plus my chest locks are busted, Bill had to use a fucking coat hangar... And if a `Noid-girly sees my ass, there`s no chance I`ll ever bang `er(he never, ever gets da pussy) - Hey, shut up_**, Borealis interrupted his own twisted voices and smacked himself on the back of his head with his own tail, continuing a second later.   
  
**_ My piece o` shit life...   
  
_** And then he continued walking on towards the center of town, where a lone clock store was conveniently left undamaged for whatever reason.   
  
**_ You piece of shit life... Baaaald fucking legs... No rearview fucking monitor... Three different colors, fucking RAG in my knee cap!_** At that, Borealis reached down with his head and ripped out what remained of the rag that had been lodged in his right knee for the past two hours. _**Tailtip making sparks fly everywhere...**_   
  
**_ Oh the whole world thinks I`m a loser...   
  
_** A pause as a street cab swerved out into view, promptly heading on a byline for the rear of the Organoid at close to 80 miles per hour.   
  
**_ Hey cabby, gimme a push!   
  
_** Swerve, ***_CRASH_*** and Borealis` newly dented body went flying through the air, crashing through the front glass window of the clock store he had been heading for and landing with a sickening roll only to spring right back up, the dent now mysteriously gone, both different colored eyes focusing in on the first clock that came into sight, which listed the date and time, along with a few dozen other unessentially useful things, like the temperature, which promptly cranked up to the high 100s as the store exploded in flames. Mysteriously as ever, Borealis was untouched by the flames and utterly oblivious to the fact that the heat had melted away all of the dirt, mud, slime and evaporated the water that had formerly covered his body.   
  
**_ Hrrr... Now what? No fluffy egg-muffins, no Bill, no Geno, no Leyla, no... Fuck, no ONE... WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW, GOD DA-errrrreeeeeheheh, I KNOW!!!   
  
_** At that, the Organoid vanished in a dual colored aura of red and blue, outlined with black, then promptly blew out of what was left of the ceiling and went off in a seemingly random direction into the skies, seemingly ignorant of the chaos it had left behind.   
  
  
Two people were sharing a cell. On one side, a former champion, on the other, a former fugitive. On one side, an unkempt, dirty, disturbed looking young man whose right arm was flexing and twitching around involuntarily, whose eyes had clenched shut and whose teeth were grinding together as what was almost the only sound permeating the entire room.   
  
A day ago, Brad had been unintentionally sloppy, he`d been caught by three crewmen trying to jury-rig a stolen detonation charge to the side of one of the primary connections to the Fatalistic Renegade`s Zoid Core. The charge would`ve probably lead to the entire Whale King going sky high in a _very_ bad sort of way and that would`ve probably killed Brad as well, but for some reason, the former rogue didn`t seem to care much about the prospect of dying.   
  
Freedom to die on his feet or live a life hiding.   
  
Brad Hunter was many things, and though few people would`ve pegged him for it, he was a potential martyr for lost or desperate causes.   
  
Now though, he had been moved to the Emerald Nightmare, at roughly the same time that Bill Chapman had finally changed cells. The black haired youth looked like an escapee from Hell, he was a bit on the thin side, his hair had gotten long enough that it obscured his neck and had been put into a starter ponytail of some kind, his bangs hung out in front of his face but oddly, didn`t fall into it. His eyes looked like those of a war veteran, but they held focus. A dangerous focus.   
  
That focus had been why Brad had kept as far away as possible from his cellmate, going so far as to take the too-thin pillow off the bottom bed and use it to sit down in the corner. The lighting wasn`t as unbearable as in either of their former cells - they could both actually _see_ clearly - if they bothered to open their eyes. For as much as Brad was keeping his distance, Bill was keeping his own as well, looking a little more deranged and determined with every passing second, though Hunter didn`t look to see this fact. He`d been sitting in the same corner on the same pillow for close to...   
  
How long had it been, exactly? Ten hours? Twelve? Longer?   
  
"Gsshfff," sounded in strain from Bill`s side of the reasonably large room. Twelve feet in any direction, cramped - yes, but still bearable. To an extent. "Fffshnngh... Fffhhh..."   
  
"What the _hell_ are you _doing_?" The former mercenary finally droned out, more than a _little_ annoyed at the sounds now coming from his cellmate. The reply was harsh and instant, so instant that he hadn`t even been finished speaking by the time Bill said it.   
  
"_Shut up_ and lemme _concentrate_..."   
  
Silence, aside from the former Thunder Team leader`s gritty, determined sounds, and Brad finally opened his eyes, let out a long, quasi-defeated sigh and glanced towards the cell door with little, if any, emotion.   
  
_ "I hope Jamie and Leyla got off better than I did. Be a real waste if they didn`t..."   
  
_ Another sigh and the no-longer-lone wolf hung his head onto one hand, staring blankly at his cellmate with even less care than he`d shown for the door. "Whatever you`re doing, it`s probably hopeless," he exclaimed bluntly, his own thoughts of escape having been bored out of him by the time in all of the cells he had been doing lately, not to mention the hiding.   
  
"There are no unwinnable wars," Bill groaned out in reply, finally opening his eyes and almost knocking Brad even further into the corner of the wall with just a single look. If not for the unusual nature of that look, Hunter would`ve been so unphased and so routinely cynical that most people would`ve wanted to punch his lights out. As it stood though, he wasn`t unphased and he couldn`t find the words for cynicism.   
  
Two strikes left on the collar, Bill`s eyes glowed at the edges of each brown iris, a faint neon blue in one eye and a neon red in the other, both only barely made visible on the outer lines of each oak-colored ring, as well as along the pupil. "There are no unbreakable chains and there are _no_ inescapable prisons."   
  
"What... The hell..."   
  
"I`m getting _out of here_. _Soon_."   
  
Brad was so stunned by the course of the precursing seconds that he couldn`t even find the words to ask what was happening, nor could he find the will to do anything other than shut his mouth and keep quiet, deciding that - if it was possible - Bill would open the way to his own escape, or the way to destroy this entire Zoid and end the fighting now.   
  
"_Very_. Fucking. _Soon_."   
  
  
A blaze lit through the otherwise uniform coloring of the blackened snow and ash that covered the majority of Nyx, and unlike the frequent blasts from volcanos or exploding energy crystals, this blaze was colored a solid white, outlined with a fading purple inherent to most plasma-based thruster systems, which in turn rendered the backside and tail of a saurian shape visible, despite the dark coloration of the creature itself.   
  
It was alone. A murderous hunter burning through a desolate, hellish wasteland at around two hundred miles per hour with infrequent bursts of greater speed, sometimes taking short spurts of low level flight and gliding through the air despite having all the aerodynamic properties of a worn down brick, diving into a canyon with all the agility and speed of a peregrine making a kill only to touch down on both feet perfectly and launch forward through the virtual obstacle course within.   
  
In every way, it was little more than a Geno Saurer, at least as far as outward appearances went. Remove it`s guns and it would`ve been indistinguishable from an ordinary Geno, whereas a true Geno Breaker bore a slanted crest along the top of it`s head and was all of a few feet longer in the tail than an ordinary Geno Saurer. The true differences between the former and the latter was that Breakers were _drastically_ more powerful, boasting far greater durability and performance, as well as additional mounts on the legs for weaponry - be it machine guns, missile launchers or just about anything else that would fit.   
  
There were other differences, but few were obvious at a passing glance.   
  
This Geno Saurer looked - and was named - as if it was trying to be a Geno Breaker. It lacked the crest on it`s head, it`s tail wasn`t the few feet longer and it`s paint scheme hadn`t been changed like with the two original Breakers, and it wasn`t anywhere near as powerful as it`s more notorious counterparts. This was the Proto Breaker, it was piloted by Marshall Davis, and it was armed to match it`s namesake.   
  
The armor hadn`t been changed but leg mounts had been added to it`s design, now boasting a pair of missile boxes like those seen on the 'Psycho Breaker' used by Riese, and it`s back no longer sported a heavy duty double cannon setup, instead featuring an Iron Kong II-like jet pack unit, which in turn mounted a pair of heavy dual laser cannons which stuck out prominently to either side of the neck and head, mounted on semi-rails so that they could slide forward or back and out of the way. The conventional nose-mounted pulse cannons were still in place, and the claws hadn`t changed either, but this new, improved Geno Saurer looked as though it could fill all the functions of the true Geno Breaker at _far_ less of a cost in time and effort.   
  
In short, it was the cheap way around Zoid evolution. Corner cutting at it`s best.   
  
"Controls`re still a bit sluggish," Marshall reported blithely, pulling his headphones up and idly rubbing where the bullet had earlier shaved his mustache off. He _liked_ his little wannabe mustache, and it took him so long to grow it...   
  
_ "Need to kill that bitch if I ever get the chance,"_ he thought in vain, noticing all too late that there was a new blip on his scanners.   
  
The unstable canyon wall to the right and front of the Proto Breaker blew open almost without warning, flames and lava bringing Marshall out of his musings and almost making him pause the song he was listening to for fear that he would actually need to hear what was going on around him in addition to seeing it. The explosion continued for several seconds, looking like a sideways geyser during that time before finally finishing it`s brief-but-violent seeming spew-fest, black smoke pooling off of the already cooling flow of molten rock, which solidified in a matter of seconds.   
  
Nyx was colder than it appeared, and darker as well.   
  
That same darkness was why the small, dual glow of golden light behind the smoke became more visible with each passing second, jolting Davis once more before a voice sounded over the broadband, almost muted by the roar of his headphones. The song he was listening to hit it`s course and then came to a blank stop, leaving him able to hear for all of a few seconds as someone spoke.   
  
"Hello there. You don`t know me, but I`m here to kill you. Good-bye."   
  
And with that, the song blazed back up as loudly as ever, leaving Marshall stunned as an even louder roar blew into his ears from nowhere and everywhere at once, sounding out in tune with the very song that he was listening to. Combat instincts honed through over a decade of working as a hard fighting mercenary kicked in before he could even register that he was under attack, and with a blaze of gold, white lined with purple and orange, the battle began - the Liger Zero making the first move.   
  
"**_STRIKE LASER CLAW!!!_**"   
  
  
** It has begun**, Roc stated, the ancient Organoid`s Voice sounding a bit more grave than usual. Explosions flashed in the distance, along with streaks of neon-tinted colors moving at hundreds of miles an hour within the canyon, looking like little more than a blurred pattern of flames, streaks, infrequent bursts of lava and loud blasts that lit up the entire enclosed battlefield.   
  
"What do you think the outcome will be?" Madison asked with only passing interest at best. Her club was swung up over her shoulder as usual, pink-red eyes focused only slightly on the carnage breaking out in the canyon. Unlike Roc, she couldn`t see through the terrain very well, settled instead on tracking the minds of each combatant, and both Bit and Marshall tended -   
  
_ "Who the fuck is this asshole?!" "-now, if I can just back him into a corner and blow up the wall behind him..."   
  
_ - to think very loudly. When they actually bothered thinking at all, that is. It made it a bit of a task to track their thoughts, and if she wasn`t naturally gifted for such a thing, she probably would have had trouble, but thankfully, as loud as their thoughts were, their emotions were even louder.   
  
** I believe that Three will be victorious, if that is what you mean. He had the element of surprise this time-**"- but he won`t during the next," Madison finished the sentence for Roc, not actually cutting the huge creature off. The two knew one another so closely that they were literally able to think the same thoughts pre-emptively and finish one another`s sentences as if it was nothing.   
  
** Agreed. If he wins this time, I will not be surprised. The _next_ battle will be a _true_ test.   
  
** Madison merely gave a slow nod and continued watching the two Zoids carrying out their duel to the death as if it were some twisted dance.   
  


_ End Chapter Fifteen  
  
_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Borealis continues being insane with a (hopefully funny) parody of Adam Sandler, Bit begins his apparently cryptic training, Sarah comes to terms with the fact that her first son has completely **gone over the edge** and we meet the first two of the three prototype Geno pilots... All in all, productive, huh? >_>  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** That scene is only a possibility, I`m not sure if it`ll happen and I`m not particularly sure if it **can** happen. And no, Susan isn`t Hardin`s replacement, she lacks the horrid hairstyle and happens to be even more of a hardass, not to mention more dangerous >_>  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Glad you enjoy it.  
  
**Illidan:** Confusion is the name of the game :P  
  
So long and see ya next time(in a bit of a rush here)! Sh33p out. 


	16. Crashing Reverence

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick something relatively low key/menacing when you hit the last scene, and use Linkin Park - Numb for the latter chunk of scene three. That`s my only advice.  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
Crashing Reverence   
  
  
  
Farentown. Far removed from the brutal fighting that was infrequently taking place around Romeo City, even further from the carnage that had _decimated_ Garnhelm Base, this city had been remarkably spared from destruction thus far, proving a safe haven for hundreds upon thousands of people already. While it was true that Farentown had suffered tremendous damage during the night that had already come to be known simply as Endnight, it had still come through far less beaten down than it`s larger counterpart.   
  
This was due, in no small part, to the exploits of the city`s ragtag defense force. Surviving local Zoids, visitors, notable semi-locals such as the Suicide Team, a surviving Guardian Force squad of mixed Zoids - two Command Wolves, a Gun Sniper, an Iron Kong and a Shield Liger - and headed up by one of the most impressive Zoid warriors in living memory, namely Harabec Davids. All things considered, the dozen or so lightly armed attacks thus far had been turned back with almost minimal effort, leaving the city the chance to organize itself.   
  
Despite having no military experience, and despite lacking the natural talent for leadership possessed by Leon Tauros or Sarah Obscura, Harabec had been able to stabilize things, if not through his own actual leadership then through following advice from others and using his influence to make it happen. Despite being retired for ten years, he still had a _lot_ of pull with people, apparently, something that was coming in more use by the day.   
  
This wasn`t lost on one Paul Tsun, who had wisely avoided mentioning any of his talents in medicine or Zoid maintenance, choosing instead to keep close to his son and be left alone. It hadn`t been lost on the overworked looking young woman who was stumbling exhaustedly out of the Winston Hospital either, Abbie had spent close to thirty-six hours continuing her crash course in jury-rigged surgery, compromising supply shortages and dealing with irate families who`d just lost loved ones. All in all, she looked about as stressed and upset as she felt, holding herself up with one arm against a streetlamp and stopping short of throwing up onto the sidewalk.   
  
It also wasn`t lost on the pair of sideswiping lunatics currently taking part in a minor skirmish just a mile outside the city. Marcus Harlock and Kyle Mazemia had been up, non-stop, for close to forty hours each, with all of two hours worth of fifteen minute power naps and only caffinated soda and junk food to keep them going. All things considered, the two could`ve passed themselves off as they`d been during the insanity-ridden week they`d come to know as the Suicide Days, though each was becoming increasingly annoyed at just about everything, and it was showing in their piloting. Case in point -   
  
"**_WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU FUCKING FUCKERS?! HAVE YOU NO FUCKING DECENCY?! WHY THE FUCKING SHIT-FUCK CAN`T YOU JUST BE SMART, WALK-THE-FUCK-AWAY AND LEAVE THE GOD-FUCKING-DAMN CITY ALONE?! EH?!_**"   
  
- right now, emphasised by the flying, newly beheaded Saber Tiger, which was promptly shot to ribbons by a stream of pulse lasers before the head landed somewhere on the ground and wound up stomped on by the Shadow Fox`s left forepaw, which was still glowing from having just taken the thing`s head off in the first place.   
  
"Yanno, Newb, it kinda loses it`s meaning when you keep saying 'fuck' all the time," Kyle sardonically pointed out, idly landing in between a pair of Red Horns and opening up with his blasters. Both promptly let out groans and fell over, right as a green Rev Raptor went flying through the air, landed and wound him getting an energy scythe punched straight into it`s chest before having it`s head shot off, a second shot ringing out and flying right between the Ivory Blade Liger`s teeth before stabbing down the gun barrel of a Command Wolf, detonating it`s gun and blowing open it`s back as a result.   
  
"You _both_ need to stop dicking around," Harabec stated plainly, drawing his scythes back and leaving the other Rev Raptor to fall harmlessly to the ground, where a foot claw perfectly decapitated it a second later, leaving the pilot to climb out and try to run away. "These attacks are getting more and more frequent and it`s starting to worry me. They`re building up to _something_..."   
  
"They`re probably just too scared to mount a full-on attack," Kyle replied, watching the Shadow Fox burst through the air and decapitate a second Rev Raptor with one swipe of it`s left claw, ending the battle as a result. No Rommel Zoids remained on the battlefield.   
  
It had been fifty-to-three. The Suicide Team had taken down all of thirteen Zoids each, with great strain involved. Harabec had offed everything else without even looking as though he was putting effort into it.   
  
"Can`t say I blame `em," the young Stigma Stoller-lookalike commented in a sarcastic mumble, swinging his blades back into neutral and yawning. Sleep deprivation tended to make he and Mark a bit more dangerous, but only for so long and only on so many occasions. Both lacked proper motivation right now, both needed to eat and both hadn`t bathed in three or four days. Their body odor _alone_ probably could`ve knocked out half the enemy force if given the chance...   
  
"You two, take a break," Harabec ordered, guiding his supposedly-obsolete Zoid around the burnt form of a Pteras and then coming to a slow stride towards the city. "Get some sleep, food, whatever - and if you have to use a fire hose to get that _god_ damn _stench_ offa you, _do it_. I can _smell_ you from here..."   
  
"You _would_ smell me from there," Mark complained, the Shadow Fox letting out a dulled half-whine from all of the bitching and complaining it had born witness to over the past days. "Sure I would, but better me than you-know-who."   
  
"If you even _try_ to bring cotton candy into this, I _will_ shoot you," Mark warned, swiveling his main gun around as a blithe growling conversation started between the Liger and the Fox. Apparently the two were getting increasingly humbled by the fact that an outdated Rev Raptor could do more damage than they could - even Zoids had egos after all. "Shoot _at_ me, you mean," Harabec corrected boredly, unamused at his nephew`s antics.   
  
"You two are the single most fucked up family I`ve ever met."   
  
"You think _we`re_ bad? You should see the kid`s parents... Or Abbie`s entire extended _family_!"   
  
"... I`m not a kid."   
  
"Anyone younger than me is a _kid_. Anyone older is a senile _asshole_."   
  
"You don`t have much of a social life, do you?" Kyle asked bluntly, not really expecting a quick answer, and not really getting one either.   
  
"... Nope."   
  
"Figured as much."   
  
"He`s still hung up on a reporter."   
  
"A reporter?"   
  
"Can it, _Markie_."   
  
"... Awww, did Ah hit a widdwe bitty newvywewvy, _Unca Beck_?"   
  
"... I`m just gonna shut up and butt out now," Kyle concluded to himself.   
  
"Stuff it, _Chinny_," both Harabec and Mark growled out at once.   
  
  
Explosions rang out, the battle that had been going on for all of ten minutes continued to rage with no sign of give on either side. The Liger Zero`s white armor had again been tarnished, but not by the relentless, hellish attacks of the Proto Breaker, which slipped around with all the grace of a ballet dancer on roller blades, literally thruster-skating on the side of the canyon wall and barely avoiding explosions from lava and the Liger`s only ranged gun in the process.   
  
Marshall was a generalist, a well balanced pilot who always fought with his own survival held above everything else, including the mission. To him, victory would be attained whether he killed the Liger or not, he just had to escape if he couldn`t, while Bit`s case was far less easy to negotiate. He was a generalist too, a well balanced pilot who always fought with everything in mind but his goal above all else. Victory could only be attained, for him, if the Proto Breaker and it`s pilot took an early trip to the grave.   
  
Cannonfire rang out, the Proto Breaker blazed off of the canyon wall and landed with a skid on one leg, whipping around sideways and spraying everything in the Liger`s general direction with it`s nose and shoulder guns, causing explosions and lines of flame to erupt with every single impact as crystal colored laser beams and solid white plasma fireballs tore through the air with enough firepower to level a Gojulas in under three seconds.   
  
If Bit hadn`t figured out how to activate the Zero armor`s shielding system on his own, he would`ve been dead by the time he fully registered the amount of firepower that his enemy was throwing out. As it stood though, a golden halo shot from thin in front of the Liger, swiftly expanding shut just in time to block a plasma bolt, which hit the shield and rebounded right into a nearby crystal, causing it to explode and showering the narrow confines of the battlefield with several tons of highly explosive, jagged debris.   
  
Again, if not for the Liger`s shield, Bit Cloud would`ve died instantly. The shards would`ve ripped through the cockpit armoring and either gutted him like a fish or it would`ve burnt him to a crisp, alive and screaming. The Liger Zero`s energy shield was a blessing indeed, because it prevented these things, allowing Bit the time to activate the booster units and take the otherwise suicidal risk of diving headlong through the Proto Breaker`s onslaught, with explosions tearing apart the ground to either side in the ensuing charge, which ended with the shield all but shattering on impact with the Breaker`s chest.   
  
The combatants were thrown apart - Bit and the Liger stopped dead from the head-on collision, the Proto Breaker flying back several yards and coming to an unbalanced stop on both feet and the tip of it`s tail in response, promptly bending forward and roaring as Marshall pulled the trigger and fired off another salvo from his nose cannon.   
  
Bit didn`t stay and take it this time, instead dodging to the right and firing his boosters back to life to again close the distance, swiping an uncharged, golden claw across the side of the mutant Geno Saurer`s head, though Davis was obviously more skillful than his personality would reveal, swinging his Zoid around with the impact and belting the smaller Liger all across it`s left flank, sending the white Zoid flying into the canyon wall with a thunderous impact and a dueling pair of roars to match, lightning striking in the background.   
  
Thunder echoed, the frigid winds picked up and the Liger all but blasted out of the pile of debris that had hidden it from view after slamming into the side of the wall, it`s cry of battle matching the intensity of it`s pilot. Davis replied in kind with a murderous little smirk, flipping one of the added triggers that had taken up space in the firing controls of the Geno`s cockpit setup and then listening in what seemed almost like slow motion as the Proto Breaker`s left grappler hand split open between the top-knuckles, which slid down at ninety degree angles to reveal a telescroping barrel of some kind.   
  
"Don`t`cha just love technology, you braindead _fuckwit_?!" He asked joyfully, maintaining his grip on the trigger as a thin bolt of charged particles rippled out from within, bylining through the torturous atmosphere in the canyon and heading straight for the Liger Zero`s lower jaw. Bit was an inkling faster than Marshall`s trigger finger though, jolting to a stop and then swinging awkwardly to the right and a manner that threw the Liger right off it`s feet and into a combat roll along the ground, firing off several shots from it`s dual impact cannon in the process before blazing back up to it`s feet.   
  
The Proto Breaker rocked from the initial hits - it wasn`t very damaged, but it was thrown off balance, while the four rounds after missed entirely and instead plowed into obsidian-colored rock, sending exploding debris and acidic smoke out in plumes as a result. By the time that the blast had stopped though, the Liger had stabilized and closed the distance with the Breaker, which had already re-concealed it`s miniature charged particle gun, the jumpjet struts on it`s back suddenly swinging down to either side and pivoting to face the ground before blazing hot white, an action mirrored by the thrusters in the legs.   
  
"_Shit_," the blonde growled out as the warped Geno dodged out of the way by inches, bolting through the air and landing almost like a spider on the canyon wall, only to rebound and repeat the pattern again, jumping it`s way out of the canyon as a result.   
  
"You`re not gettin` away that easily," Bit muttered with determination, gunning the Liger`s boosters once again and literally running up the perfectly vertical walls of the canyon without pause, chasing his foe down like a lion going in for the kill.   
  
  
_ "Anyone..."_ A pause. "An... Ergh... Anyone get the plate number o` that Gustav?" A haggard voice asked bluntly, dulled brown eyes sliding open to greet the ceiling as a familiar blue, reptillian head peeked into view.   
  
** 101125. Didn`t hit you too hard, from the sound of things though**, a voice to match stated, sounding off not in his ears, but in his thoughts. It was comforting, a bit exhausted and a great deal maternal, but above all, it set him at ease as he looked around, realizing that he was home. For the first time in what felt like years, but had only been months, Vega Obscura awoke to find that he was _home_. No groups of untrustworthy people, no murderous siblings, no military masterminds, no... No _one_ but the only one who actually seemed to _matter_ anymore.   
  
"Specular," he said, as if just trying to practice with his own voice again. When he sat up, he finally realized that he was nude, no doubt a result of his caregiver having seen no need for them when she was putting him in bed in the first place. Still though, he _did_ have his modesty to protect...   
  
** And no, you didn`t urinate or defecate on yourself. Didn`t eat, either...   
  
** "I think I figured that out already," he replied, turning sideways and dangling his thin legs off the side of the bed before stretching out in just about every direction at once. It felt good to be home, but there were still certain things to tend to, the first of which answered his question before he even thought to ask it as an ear splitting roar blew through the cabin, sounding ecstatic, thrilled - like a dog wagging it`s tail at the sight of it`s master returning from a lengthy trip. That was also about the time that Vega saw the enormous red screen shifting out from in front of the window, only to hear a repetition of the roar from a second earlier.   
  
"Owny`s okay?" He asked with a smirk, standing up only to promptly fall back down onto his hind end and resume stretching until an audible ***POP*** sounded from his lower back, leading to a briefly morbid expression followed by a relieved sigh.   
  
** When this is all over, you`re going to see a chiropractor**, Specular stated so factually that it left _no_ room for arguing.   
  
"When _what_ is all over?" Vega asked, suddenly feeling tired all over again. He was one of the only people on Zi who _didn`t_ know about the current Reign of Chaos that was wracking civilization, if only because he had been a _bit_ occupied when it had started and hadn`t been awake at all until a few seconds ago.   
  
** It would take too long to explain. I hope you- [**_"World domination is for those who actually care. Consider this the kickstart of the apocalypse." "**IT`S SHOWTIME, ZEKE!!!**" "I **knew** Romeo would be one of their first targets."   
  
** Well what the hell do I do now?   
  
Battle lines are being drawn. We cannot do this alone.   
  
** "Do you feel that?" "Destroy." "All Hell`s broken loose." "Asmodeus?"   
  
** It is time.   
  
** "Why don`t you pick on someone your own size?" "**DAMN YOU!!!**" "Why do I get the feeling this is going to be one of those days?" "God forgive me for what I`m about to do..." "I don`t understand." "... Where am I?" "Now hold the damn line! **Nothing get`s through, got that**?!" "I`m not a monster..." "Ask him." "Get well soon, King." "Kale`s alive?" "Your worst nightmare. Just. Like. Me."   
  
"I`m tired of the headgames, Kale." "See you in Hell, Bit Cloud."   
  
"Here... We... **GO!!!**"   
  
"Right now, I`d do **anything** to let the world know how fucking **bad** this past week or two`s been for me." "Shit."   
  
** If you`ll excuse us, we need some CRASH THERAPY!!!   
  
** Bring back the wayward Bill, I`m assuming?   
  
"What the Hell is wrong with you? We`re being taken to god-knows-where and your only reaction is to pop off **jokes**?" "Bloody, filled with screaming, improvisional medical care at it`s best and more physical and mental trauma than you can imagine." "Come to finish me off?" "... Yes sir. Fleiheit and another woman - we **believe** it was Riese - killed themselves before we could take them alive." "Then why are we going to let them die?" "Well, aren`t you two just the miserable heroes of the day?" "I`m not hungry..."   
  
** Sleep, Vega.   
  
** "Let go of me!" "Say hello to Henry. My brother."   
  
"Tick... Tock... Tick... Tock..."   
  
"Impact in five... Four... Three... Two... --**pact**!" "You didn`t lose half your blood fighting a psychopath." "General Hauser has just sent an order to hold position." "Is your son`s name Leon, by any chance?" "Looks like they`ve stopped..." "Is it skipping ahead to a Fury?"   
  
I fear that Shadow is going beyond that.   
  
** This is unsettling. To an extent.   
  
** "Where can I find Kale Obscura`s cell?" "Pretty simple choice, really."   
  
"I was wondering whether or not you would show up."   
  
"Breaking?" "I also hate how quiet you`re being." "You`re leaving then?" "I know you`re there, Will." "What the heck are blabbing about?" "**STOP RIGHT THERE!!!**" "Exactly. We also have to arrange the deaths of her adoptive family..." "Which puts them right in the line of fire for the Hellwalker." "I`ll be free again..." "Kale..." "Kale!"   
  
"**KALE!!!**"   
  
"Fire at will! Hose the bastard!" "What the hell is going on?!" "Welcome to the gateway, Bit Cloud..."   
  
"**THE GATEWAY TO HELL!!!**"   
  
"Oh god..." "I won`t let that bastard kill anyone else!" "**WHAT THE HE-" "WHE-" "IT`S ALREADY DOWNED THREE SQUADS?!" "I CAN`T SEE IT!!!**" "Sir!" "We never knew what we were getting ourselves into, did we?" "Come to die?" "You bastard." "How the hell fast is he?!" "You were right. There`s nothing we can do..." "**No escape**." "Ohmygod..."   
  
"Geno Saurer, no more. Say hello to the Geno Maxis."   
  
** One shall stand, one shall fall.   
  
** "**KALE!!!**"   
  
"I am a Guardian."   
  
"There are no unwinnable wars."   
  
** It has begun.**_] - understand through that little demonstration.   
  
Vega almost passed out from the stress that the telepathic slideshow put on his brain. Every single sentence brought a flash of the scene it had taken place in, every single thought was captured perfectly and every single waking moment across the planet had flooded into him in a single instant of mind numbing clarity.   
  
A lesser being would`ve crumpled into a vegetative heap or gone insane. Vega merely stood up and robotically walked over to the closet, opening it on instinctive auto-pilot as his almost-shattered mind threatened to buckle, held firm though, despite this fact, by his own will, and the support offered by the Organoid that had almost telepathically lobotomized him less than ten seconds earlier.   
  
When he finished recollecting his thoughts, he found himself dressed in a Hawaiian-styled, buttoned t-shirt and gray khaki shorts, standing in the kitchen and in the midst of opening up the microwave, with Specular raggedly stumbling onto the couch and falling over the armrest, rattling the entire thing with all 850 pounds of her metallic body`s weight and issuing the mental equivelent of a sigh.   
  
Vega knew though. He knew what he had to do.   
  
"Sleep, Specular. _I`ll_ watch over you this time, but when you wake up, we`ve got work to do," he said, speaking the last part as little more than a soft whisper. Idly, he reached onto the counter and stroked an index finger across the back of one of the countless Micro Sworders that Specular had spread across the globe for more years than anyone currently on Zi had been alive and functioning.   
  
_ "Keep your eyes and ears peeled though,"_ he thought, though it wasn`t his usual voice. In another clarity-filled instant, control of the Micro Sworder hivemind had been wrestled away from the unconscious Organoid, laying now in the hands of a twelve year old who seemed to hold it to his will as if he had been born solely to reign over it.   
  
Natural talent came in more ways than one for the Obscura family.   
  
  
Snoring filled the background quiet of what had formerly been Rev`s Diner, now known solely as 'the pit stop.' Only two people had bothered to come in for work anymore, and they didn`t do it for pay - the place had been effectively converted into the equivelent of a combination lounge, mess hall and, in a few cases, a bed and breakfast. Two such cases were Marcus Harlock and Kyle Mazemia, both of whom lay sprawled out across their respective sleeping spaces, with Kyle having claimed the couch that had been dragged down from Harabec`s upstairs apartment and Mark having taken up a spot on the floor, idly wrapped in the rug and using the seat cushions of a few chairs for a pillow, occasionally getting kicked or smacked upside the head from the silver haired young man sprawled out on the couch to his back.   
  
Both had been able to take ten minute showers - just long enough to scrub the literal _grit_ off their bodies - then gather a bite or two to eat before passing out wherever their bodies landed. Kyle had gone first, so naturally he was able to claim the couch while Mark was still upstairs taking a brillo pad to his armpits - and yes, he had needed a brillo pad. They were _that_ dirty - and had also managed to get all of a half of a sloppily made cheeseburger crammed down his gullet before concing out. Mark had been in about the same way, taking a few seconds longer to gather a series of seat cushions and pile them up on the rug that had become his sleeping bag before passing out as well.   
  
They hadn`t been the only ones either. A Helic Guardian Force private was laying haphazardly on a pool table with a his overshirt rolled up into a bundle under his head for a pillow and his arms slung over his eyes to shut out the lighting of the place, while a rookie Gunsniper pilot had literally fallen asleep where she`d sat down at the counter, using her arms as pillows and drooling onto the bartop while mumbling incoherently in her sleep.   
  
The scenes were all repeated to varying degrees in several more places, bar those pilots and ordinary civil servants who were awake and merely eating or playing cardgames or the arcade to pass the time - local power had been one of the many places where Farentown was better off than Romeo. For one, half the buildings in the city ran independent of any centralized power supply, mainly because Farentown and every one of that half of it`s architecture dated back to the heady times of the Helic and Guylos Wars, where having centralized power meant that one swift air strike could screw an entire city into starvation or worse in a matter of minutes.   
  
Only three people - who were conscious, anyway - had the knowledge that the diner had never quite been used in the capacity it was seeing now. Two were the faithful employees who`d shown up out of charity for the people defending the city, the other was a man in his late-middle ages who was currently sipping a shot of hard vodka mixed with coffee from a re-filled water cantine.   
  
Harabec Davids had never been one for routine. He had initially been kicked out of three of the first four teams he had joined as a result of his fighting style or his failure to follow logical orders that he could see holes through when blindfolded. The fourth had been a team _he_ had formed, and it had been himself, his younger sister, her boyfriend, an old friend by the name of Michael Summers and another young woman by the name of Janet Tansas.   
  
Eventually, Tansas became Mrs. Janet Summers, his sister took on the last name of Harlock and three kids between the four of them followed. The first was a natural rebel and a flirt by the name of Pierce - she seemed more a combination of her father`s wild side and her mother`s quasi-apathetically-humorous side than anything else - and then a boy by the name of Marcus, less than two years later - who just so _happened_ to be a combination of his mother`s slightly introverted sense of individuality and his father`s utterly _warped_ sense of humor - and then a girl named Abigail a month or two after that, who seemed to be, more or less, the sane one who had her mother`s natural aptitude for machinery and medical care.   
  
That had all been roughly twenty-two years ago. That thought, spurned on by a bit of alchohol and caffine-fueled reverie, was enough to bring something to Harabec`s mind as he continued musing things through for no other reason than to keep his mind off of the present. What did it bring to his mind, you ask? Simple.   
  
_ "Damn, I`m gettin` old..."   
  
_ And with that, the former Revered Raptor downed another shot, doing his best to ignore the burning sensation that trailed down his throat all the way to his stomach, where it continued to churn for a little while longer before the feeling faded out and left him a bit lightheaded, though that too cleared up with continued musings over the past, which in turn was halted _right_ when he got to the good part about a certain reporter who`d begun hounding him right after he`d taken on the whole personna that had become his trademark after the Davids Team disbanded only to reform a few months later as the Summers Team.   
  
"Anyone in the shower`s gettin` flung out a window," came a relatively petite sounding voice that sounded utterly uncharacteristic and somewhat slurred with exhaustion, even possessing a certain twang to it that was usually covered up quite perfectly as Abbie stumbled into the diner, practically dragging along a rucksack of clothing that she had either collected from Mark`s Gustav or raided from her dorm, which was probably looted at some point during her time away from the campus.   
  
"Nice to see you`re feelin` well," Harabec commented dryly with a smirk at his adoptive niece, watching her uncharacteristic swagger across the floor, the even more uncharacteristic pause, then finally...   
  
"Ahscrewit," she grumbled, stumbling over to where Mark was by what was probably a mixture of observation and instinct before plopping down on the hard wood next to him and somehow worming into the rug-turned-sleeping bag like she owned the thing - and him for that matter - fitting in and setting her head next to Mark`s as if he`d been intentionally saving space for her the entire eight minutes he had been asleep. The two literally _fit_ together with her back to his stomach and his arms snaked around her midsection automatically, while Kyle was left to absently kick Mark in the head from where he was sleeping on the couch.   
  
Again.   
  
"Yep," Harabec thought aloud to himself, noting that no one in the diner even batted an eye at the antics of the three of them. "I`m ge-" "Is there a Kyle Mazemia here?"   
  
He was interrupted. Again. In almost the same way as before, no less, as a young woman entered the diner. This time, Harabec wasn`t the only one taking a look at the source of the voice, as at least two of the nearby card players - one who resembled the stereotypical college football player who`d gone into the military and his even more stereotypical military-girlfriend-with-a-death-glare who only gave the new arrival one glance and then narrowed her eyes at her apparent boyfriend - bothered to note her arrival as well.   
  
Where Abbie was short, tanned and had dark green hair and a body type matching her older sister`s - albeit compressed into a smaller, girl-next-door kind of package - the new arrival was tall for a woman, with her shoulderblade-length, slightly silky brown hair held in a high ponytail, wearing a white jumpsuit that marked her as a crewmember for both "Fury Team" and "Vega Team," even though both were actually the _same_ team with a different name. Where Abbie had the girl-next-door look down to a tee, this one looked more like she could`ve been either a female model or a female basketball player if she put on the necessary muscle to do so, with gray eyes and an expression that could melt titanium like ice cream in the mid-day desert sun.   
  
"Katherine Takahori, I`m guessing?" Harabec idly asked. The woman gave a nod as a geeky looking young man followed her in, looking more occupied with a blue, metallic insect of some kind than anything around him. He was dressed similarly but had a far more disheveled look about him, as if he was one of those people who could naturally find his way around in the dark in a natural disaster area, with thin glasses, maroon eyes and an O'Connelesque hairstyle to boot, though his was black rather than being naturally or unnaturally green.   
  
"He`s passed out on the couch," the former champion pointed out blithely, taking another sip of his coffee-and-vodka concoction and then watching the two visitors part with little more than a 'nice knowing you' spoken by the girl, while the fairly nerdy looking young man promptly swivelled around on one heel and departed with nothing but a backhanded wave, still intent on picking apart the blue insect he had gotten a hold of somewhere along the way.   
  
"`N I thought _I_ was strange," Beck mused.   
  
"You _are_," one of the remaining pair of employees commented as he walked by, vanishing into the kitchen some time later and leaving Harabec to resume his buzzed reflections without further interruption, even as a Hammerhead II departed the city a few minutes later. He didn`t bother to pay anymore attention to the girl, or anything else for that matter.   
  
  
A triple bolt of gold shot through the darkened sky as all Hell continued to break loose on perhaps the only place on the planet where it couldn`t have possibly been more appropriate. The bolt carried through the skies for several seconds before crashing into the ground and causing a fierce explosion of brutalized rock and crystal, sending shards of ice flying in the middle of melting into water and evaporating into steam only to snow back down all of a half a second later, leaving the Liger Zero to tear it`s claw back out of the ground and roar angrily at the Proto Breaker, which touched down with a skid not too far away.   
  
"What kinda fucking _lunatic_ are you?" Marshall asked angrily, having expected nothing more than a quick series of shots. He didn`t know _why_ he wasn`t getting any back-up, either, he had put in over a dozen such calls back to the base and never once heard so much as a single answer, it was as if they were ignoring him when he needed them the most.   
  
Or they were being jammed.   
  
"The kind that Mommy told you to run away from when you were a little boy," Bit replied in an unexpectedly Kale-like fashion, though he lacked the inherent malice and villainy in his voice to make it sound quite as intimidating as his more dangerous counterpart.   
  
"... You`re a pedophile? ... And I thought I was screwed."   
  
"... Okay, I`m a murderous, ruggedly handsome, heroic lunatic, how`s`at?"   
  
"Ruggedly handsome? Dude..."   
  
"... Why do I even bother?" Bit asked himself, having apparently broken the mood of high intensity in favor of what seemed almost perversely casual, leaving him to dodge and zig-zag in between a dozen or so attacks before stopping and throwing his shield up, just as the Breaker halted it`s assault entirely. Davis was planning something - that or he was just too pissed off to pick a gun to shoot with, though not the charged particle cannon. That would`ve left him immobile, and a lack of mobility when dealing with an opponent that had the speed and agility of the Liger Zero was almost like signing your own death warrant.   
  
"You`re an annoying son of a bitch, you know that?" Davis asked, obviously feeling the way he was speaking. Bit only replied with a cheeky grin, suddenly dropping his shield and pulling the trigger on his dual impact cannon. "Pissing people off is half the fun!" He exclaimed, even as the rounds blew into the outer layers of armor on the suarian Zoid, rocking it around from momentum but causing no _actual_ damage, creating just the gap that the blonde was looking for.   
  
A blast of thrusterfire, distance closed.   
  
An enraged string of profanity, reflexes kicked in.   
  
A second blast of thrusterfire, a crash at less than halfway, one Zoid yielding to the other. Bit screamed his dismay as the Proto Breaker rammed the Liger Zero in mid-stride, catching himself _and_ Zeke off guard in the process and shoving them both straight into the air, with the Liger practically wrapped around the from of the mutant Geno Saurer`s body, held in place by bladed fingers that threatened to stab into it at a moment`s notice.   
  
"_Fuckya, Blondie_!" Davis shouted, having apparently recognized the Liger Zero and it`s pilot from news vids at some point during their confrontation, ascending the Geno high into the air before cutting his thrusters with one last burst from the stub-wings on the Zoid`s back, turning the two into a half-flip before they came to a stop, still floating upward on prior momentum until they came to what seemed like a dead-stop in their climb, held aloft by dying inertia against the whims of gravity.   
  
It felt like an eternity, but it ended all too soon for Bit`s tastes, leaving the Proto Breaker sprawled out in the air, almost clinging to the flailing Liger Zero from above as the two fighting machines began to fall towards the ground, where the Breaker`s heavier weight would probably crush the Liger into a tin can if he didn`t act fast.   
  
Marshall was cackling obscenely, Bit was irately banging his head into the back of the flight chair and everything seemed to be screwed until Zeke cut into the blonde`s thoughts with a single image and a single pair of words to accompany it.   
  
The image was of the Liger`s back boosters. The words were simple: _Use it!_   
  
His body reacted before his conscious mind finished slapping itself for being so oblivious, and the Liger Zero roared as it`s pilot took control, swinging open the back boosters from their hiding place and then igniting them with a warrior`s cry, forcing the two Zoids to flip again before breaking apart, the Geno`s claws raking down the Liger`s chest and stomach and gouging out shallow trails in the process, but the Zero`s right claw remaining embedded in the side of the Proto Breaker`s head all the way down.   
  
"**_WHO`S SCREWED NOW, ASSWIPE?!_**" Bit demanded triumphantly as the two Zoids fell down into the black depths of another canyon - with the Liger Zero pulling down and into the lead of the Proto Breaker, which was howling it`s contempt and rage all the way down, though Marshall never got the chance to answer.   
  
A loud ***BOOM*** echoed out of the canyon, which promptly seemed to vomit out thousands of pounds of dust, vaporizing snow and sharding crystals, a golden glow permeating every last one before a lava geyser shot out from the center, also glowing golden at points as it reached for the skies like a spurt of blood from a gunshot.   
  
  
Jamie Hameros had done a _few_ crazed things in his life, most of which could be attributed to his secondary personality, but while diving into a missile barrage, crashing into the mouth of a Whale King and diving out of a suicide bombing Pteras Bomber were all nuts to every degree imaginable, for some reason, they all paled in comparison to what he was doing now.   
  
That was _probably_ because all of those things had been perpetrated, more or less, by that same secondary personality, but _this_ was being done by _him_. Consciously, intentionally - albeit obviously somewhat reluctantly, but still. Most teens would`ve had better things to do when they were stuck alone with their only available loved one, but Jamie?   
  
Somehow, dangling upside down and scurrying along a series of pipes seemed very strangely relaxing to him. Leyla wasn`t too far up ahead, but she was obviously going a bit slower than she would have otherwise to allow him to keep up with her - Jamie`s body seemed to change with his personality. While the Wild Eagle could turn it into a killing machine, Jamie himself had trouble doing more than running two miles under ideal conditions and could barely bench press a hundred-and-fifty pounds when he _poured_ all of his effort into it. The only reason he hadn`t fallen to his death was that fear was one of the best motivators in existence.   
  
"You`d probably be better off without me," he announced bluntly, avoiding the obviously fatalistic urge to glance down at the engineering section they dangled over. The main power generator was in the same room that they were, all they had to do was keep scurrying along and they`d eventually hit another vent and possibly make it to a supply room of some sort - aside from raiding a washroom sink and finding an out-of-place crate of snack foods, neither had eaten or drank anything over the past day or two, surviving only by their wits and endurance, both mental and physical.   
  
"Stop talking like that," came a slightly reassuring voice that he`d come to unknowingly rely on to keep him grounded. Jamie was still the strategist here, he had picked the times and places where they`d leave the safety of the ventillation system, but Leyla was the glue holding him together. He just wasn`t meant for playing cat and mouse games where losing meant _dying_, and she wasn`t either for that matter, but with memories of an apocalyptic past coming back in spades, she didn`t really find it quite as terrifying as it had been.   
  
"I`m serious," he retorted defeatedly, pausing and taking one hand from the piping to crack his knuckles, then repeating the process with his other hand and making _very_ sure that he was rooted each time he did it.   
  
"So am I," she replied firmly, pausing in her own movements almost as if she had known what he was stopping to do without even looking back to see. Psychic awareness was another thing that she was awakening to find herself capable of, and not just hearing the thoughts of so many people on the Whale King either. There were certain minds that stood out, certain people whose presence she could almost lock onto and monitor, and right now, they were unknowingly - in Jamie`s case, anyway - heading right for one of them.   
  
"Not serious enough," Jamie shot back, scooting along a bit more from where he hung to the pipes like a possum, shuffling uneasily towards a goal he couldn`t even see anymore.   
  
_ "Stop bitching and keep moving,"_ Will cut in annoyedly, giving the subconscious equivelent to a smack upside the head. His avatar - what Jamie saw when he thought of the other personality - was still bandaged around the head from where the door had been slammed shut on his skull, another grim reminder of one-too-many failings.   
  
"Keep outta this," Leyla cut back in, shooting a telepathic glare into Jamie`s thoughts and effectively silencing all three of them awkwardly.   
  
Knowing that your girlfriend could potentially shut down your mind if she wanted while you had a second personality that always picked at you was enough to put anyone on edge.   
  
For Jamie Hameros - hanging upside down, practically boiling in his own fluids, wearing days-worn clothing, dealing with both of them at once and feeling increasingly useless as he was - it was business as usual. The hard part was deciding which aspect of that train of thought disturbed him more, that he was surrounded by people who could easily take him out - Will, Leyla, _hundreds_ of Rommel employed guards and more than a few Zoid warriors whom he hadn`t spoken to in almost a week or longer - or that he thought it was too normal to actually realize it until now.   
  
  
Kyle Mazemia was a man of many things. Fine taste, _very_ clean, lazy on the weekends but dedicated the rest of the time, able to endure massive amounts of sleep deprivation and possessed of an appearance that made most people think one of three things, depending on who was thinking it: The first was his uncanny resemblance to a younger, livelier Stigma Stoller with silver hair and red eyes. The second was the view of the average fangirl: '**OMFG OMFG OMFG!!!! HOTT!11!**' And the third, and final, was the view of Marcus Harlock: Trusty cannon fodder.   
  
All of these things applied to certain degrees, but most people didn`t quite see him as a rag doll for the annoyed rantings of a certain, pony-tailed young woman who had the distinction of calling herself his fiancee. Or the distinction of calling him her bitch. Whichever you preferred, both worked about the same when it came to describing their relationship sometimes.   
  
"**_WHY DIDN`T YOU CALL ME, YA LOUSY BUM?! AND WHY THE HELL DIDN`T YOU WAKE UP?! I COME ALL THE WAY OUT HERE TO MAKE SURE YOU`RE ALRIGHT AND YOU`RE SLEEPING, IF I DIDN`T KNOW ANY BETTER I`D SAY YOU WERE IGNORING ME ALL WEEK LONG!_**"   
  
To this, Kyle`s only response - whilst being flung around by the straps of his overalls, half-awake and utterly terrified - was to gargle out excuses unintelligibly while recieving brain damage by the truckload. Finally though, in his dazed, shellshocked stupor, he managed to form a relatively coherent sentence or two.   
  
"Well-" A yelp. "-maybe-" A choke. "-if you`d-" A sound that vaguely resembled Santa Claus in a blender. "-stop _shaking me_-" Halt. "- then I could explain..." He finally managed to finish, though his eyes were now rolling about completely independent of one another.   
  
"Will you two please _shut up_?" Asked a voice from the floor as the rug unfolded and Mark sat up, followed by an easily annoyed looking Abbie. She had been asleep for all of two precious minutes, comfortable and reassured, able to _rest_ after spending a day and a half tending to massively injured hospital patients. Needless to say, she looked about as angry as Kyle looked disoriented, and an angry Abbie was _not_ something to take lightly...   
  
Neither was an angry Katherine.   
  
"We`re _busy_, you nosy little buzz headed snot!" She shot down at him, and Mark automatically felt the air in the room shift several times over. "Ya shouldn`t`ve done that," he commented bluntly, sliding _out_ of the way as Katherine practically dropped Kyle back onto the sofa, his head hanging lopsided as Abbie rose to her feet, one eyelid slightly twitching. Katherine was all of a head taller than Abbie, which put her near eye level with Kyle, who in turn was roughly the same height as Bit Cloud, which left the conveniently escaping Mark as the tallest in the group.   
  
He was also the only one showing any shard of self preservation.   
  
It was futile, but he _did_ try, at least.   
  
"What. Did. You. Call. _Him_?" Abbie asked, every word stopped short of the one after it. Anyone with even passing experience of being around her would`ve known that such a tone meant that it was time to give up and apologize. Kat lacked that experience.   
  
"A nosy snot, do I have to say it again?"   
  
Eyes narrowed. One could almost see lightning passing between the two before Kyle spoke up.   
  
"You two should ju-" "**_KEEP OUTTA THIS!!!_**"   
  
Far removed from this titanic clash of the PMSing girlfriends-of-absolute-psychopaths, Harabec stood near the door of the diner, having long since run out of his coffee-vodka mixture, chugging the last of it down at around the time that Katherine had begun to shake the living daylights out of her boyfriend. Conflicts of that nature rarely interested him after all, so he`d excused himself to pay attention to the small skirmish taking place outside the city.   
  
_ "Helcats,"_ he mused, picking out the attackers by the sounds of their guns alone, and also picking out that they were losing badly by the distinct sounds of the specific types of armor that made up their outer hulls being crushed. Zoid battles were loud after all, and as a veteran, Davids had something like thirty or more years of getting used to the sounds of combat, he could`ve fought half-asleep and blind if he wanted to and he would`ve still been dangerous.   
  
_ "Sleepers or at least AIs, too,"_ he judged. Real pilots didn`t keep running into the same places that their allies kept blowing up in. Sleepers and normal AI setups had pre-programmed destinations, and though they could deviate the patterns with which they arrived to them, they always had a tendency to move directly to them without failure, unless in chase mode and that wasn`t very effective for dealing with area battles where the unit in question was dealing with multiple targets.   
  
It was early evening in Farentown. That made the explosions in the distance stand out a bit more and light up the night sky, though Harabec, in his musings, wasn`t able to fully appreciate them, nor was he able to even notice the sound of a Gustav pulling up nearby. _"I still don`t get why they`d use such a large force for cannon fodder though. Doesn`t make sense, unless they`re just trying to wear us all down with drawn out combat and no real gains,"_ he thought to himself, leaning away from the frame of the front door and standing straight on the sidewalk.   
  
Something wasn`t right about this. Even when you consider that the entire world had fallen to near anarchy from the surgical manner of the Rommel Blitzkrieg, something _still_ wasn`t right. It was as if someone was dangling a half-truth in front of his face and letting him _know_ it was a half-truth to begin with, but hiding the rest of it behind some immovable, impassible object.   
  
_ "I don`t like this, not one damn bit,"_ he concluded bluntly, tucking his hands into the front pockets of the brown leather jacket he had been wearing on-and-off for two days now, finding it a bit less comfortable than his vest since it was more restrictive. Harabec only ever liked having sleeves on his shirts, after all.   
  
A loud hum and a scream brought him out of his thoughts all over again with a jerk, reflexively whipping around in time to spot the singed remains of a dead body flying through the air, and the lightspeed damage of a heavy battle laser discharge against the front wall of a building at the end of the street, melting it into a slagged hole in all of a split second. The remains landed on the concrete with a thud, and the boy, who had narrowly avoided getting turned into a cloud of bloody vapor, landed awkwardly on his backside as if pushed out of the way at the last second.   
  
"Shit," Beck muttered after a few seconds, glaring in the direction the shot had come from and quickly coming to the realization that it hadn`t been intended. _"Friendly fire, **isn`t**,"_ he reminded himself, fighting the urge to personally gun down whoever had fired into the city - accidental or not. Experience stopped him though, that and sheer logic born out of the desperate situation that he and everyone else in Farentown had to contend with. Attrition had already taken enough of a toll on the defenders of the city, it wouldn`t do too well for morale, teamwork _or_ survival if they started gunning _each other_ down, instead of the enemy.   
  
Besides, any potential weakness couldn`t be revealed to an enemy. Most military planners - be they good or just plain evil - were sticklers for details, and if they weren`t, their subordinate analysts were. They`d notice something like a local Zoid that had originally survived the last battle somehow turning up in ruins before the next, then come to the conclusion that all they had to do would be to get past the front line skirmishing and get their backs to the city.   
  
The cries of the survivor though, roused him back out of his considerations, and with grit teeth, he looked back over his shoulder at the kid, who promptly seemed to fall into a silent, traumatized haze in a matter of seconds, never once even looking Harabec`s way.   
  
"This is gonna be a long night," he finally sighed out in resignation, sympathetically ignoring the kid for a moment or two before his own instincts kicked back into play and forced him to grab the boy before running back into the diner. It didn`t offer any _real_ protection, not if it was hit by anything above an assault rifle in firepower, but it was situated in front of a private hangar and between two other buildings, each of which stood at least a floor higher. That had to count for _something_...   
  
  
Silence. It was dull. Brad normally liked the quiet of the base, when the only racket was the sound of the overpowered air conditioner units rumbling along and turning practically every room but his own into a virtual freezer, when the only things he had to do were think to himself, study his performance in battle, read over papers concerning the Command Wolf - and later, the Shadow and Scout Foxes - and occasionally clean out his small collection of high powered handguns.   
Brad owned seven of them. Ranging from a 'matchbox special' - a miniature, one shot pistol so small that it had to be held with the middle and index finger and fired by pushing an unguarded trigger on the side of the barrel with the thumb - to a custom six shooter that could fire a .365 Magnum round with enough force to blow a man off his feet while simultaneously removing the upper half of his face in the process. He even slept with a handgun under his pillow at night - the same .45 caliber handgun that he`d been stripped of when he was captured.   
  
Brad owned those guns for a number of reasons. Chief among them being that he was more than a _little_ paranoid, and paranoia didn`t always mean that people _weren`t_ out to get you. Brad had enemies, ranging from a few gangs in his hometown to former members of the Backdraft Group - and he _still_ counted Doctor Leyon among his risks no matter _how_ pseudo-friendly the man had become. He didn`t trust any of them to pick a good time and being within even vaguely close proximity to them set him on edge, which was why he`d always kept at least one of his guns on his person at all times.   
  
Being without those guns made him feel naked. Being without his coffee made him feel tired. Being without the quiet rumbling hum of the air conditioning, the bland reading provided by portfolios, accounts and score tests, or the footage of his battles to study left him feeling bland.   
  
The silence was dull. It was so dull that it was starting to wear away on his usually knife-like ability to think in a straight line, he was now starting to ramble in his head, among other things.   
  
Across from him still sat the straining ex-member of the now-dead Thunder Team, Bill Chapman, whose eyes had continued to eerily glow all through the past... How long? Five minutes? Ten? Twenty? An hour?   
  
Telling time was rather difficult when you were locked up with a vacant-looking weirdo who only spoke when he was mumbling out curses to himself or telling you to shut up so he could concentrate further. Not like he _needed_ to, but still.   
  
With a bit of resignation to his current problem, Brad finally reached up and put a fist to his cheek, leaning with his elbow against the flat, hard surface of the bed that half-hung next to him. _"One Mississippi... Two Mississippi... Three Mississippi..."_ He began to count away, if only to occupy himself.   
  
  
Somewhere, a refrigerator popped open to the quiet - but not noiseless - backdrop of a kitchen. In a mundane task, a gloved hand reached within and drew out the first soda in sight. Disgust followed, it was a diet drink and was promptly flung aside, landing somewhere on the floor, it`s contents fizzling about within as a result. The hand went back in, finding a non-diet drink and then pulling it out.   
  
I fail to see any point in this respite. We have work to do.   
  
"All work and no play makes Shadow a royal pain in the ass," came the reply, though the intended listener wasn`t even anywhere in sight. Steps were taken, the young mass murderer nonchalantly exited the kitchen and stepped into a silver, polished looking hallway. Rommel`s people had been sloppy enough to miss this place, he knew.   
  
More walking. Then a stop. A door slipped open on seeming automatic, he peeked inside and promptly resisted the urge to snicker at the pile of normally somewhat revealing clothing - skirts, sleeveless tanktops cut away towards the neck and bust line, halter tops, things of that nature - collecting actual dust in the corner of the room, with over a dozen pictures ripped up and formed into an almost obsessively neat pile on the computer desk.   
At that, he turned away and the door slid shut behind him. A few steps across the hallway and he was in another room, this one a bit smaller and by far cleaner. It was also, comparitively, much blander, save for a small group of eye catching decorations held on wall mounts within an arms reach of the bed and desk. Guns, four of them, ranging from a plain Colt to a clunky six shooter that looked like it weighed as much as an average portable stereo. If he didn`t know any better, he would`ve thought of it as a customized sawed off.   
  
A snort, a mental note and he turned away again, walking across the hallway and finding that this time, the room he entered was actually quite clean. Almost obsessively so, bar the smashed remains of an alarm clock, which was also somewhat stained by a bit of dried blood - not even an ounce-worth, but still. Several dozen Zoid model kits of varying size - all of them aerial types - almost covered one of the shelves across from the computer desk, while a small television sat on a table to the opposite side of the room, hooked up to a gaming console with a single Zoid flight simulator plugged into it, the controller neatly placed out of the way on the floor.   
  
_ "Weirdo."   
  
_ An odd thought coming out of someone like him. Again, he exited the room, turning across the hallway and entering another, only to find it empty except for a single-sized bed and a desk. No computer, no personal effects, nothing of that nature. The next room was even stranger than the one before that, with three shelves literally _crammed_ with Zoid collector`s items ranging from comic books to toys to unopened video game boxes, with one of the other walls mounting a flatscreen television and another after that being the place where a computer desk and a laptop sat. The bed was a single, the nightstand next to it had an old family picture and there was a small refrigerator sitting on the opposite side, within arms reach of the desk.   
  
A snort. He left that room too, feeling a bit annoyed until _finally_ opening the last bedroom door and cracking a mirth-filled smile. It fit his liking quite nicely - if not for the fact that it seemed a bit more 'cheerful' than he would have preferred. A single, plain bed, an open closet filled with twelve pairs of blue jeans and another two pairs of red pants, a pair of swimming trunks, underwear stacked sloppily into twin piles of of briefs and boxers, shirts hung haphazardly in no particular order - though a black-and-blue zip-up jacket _did_ catch his eye.   
  
After that, the room had a few posters for popular music bands, a pin-up or two stapled to the ceiling above the bed, and beside the computer on the desk, there sat the trophy of a golden Blade Liger, standing atop a typical, golden trophy cup, with a name stamped onto a metal plate on the wooden base, the emblem of the Zoid Battle Commission to either side.   
  
"Goody two shoes," he muttered sardonically, walking back down the hallway and eventually arriving in the living room with his drink still in hand, the television blaring static on all channels and a familiar, black Organoid sitting in a corner, dark blue eyes looking narrowed for a few seconds.   
  
Pick one already, Shadow ordered annoyedly, obviously having no need or desire for this supposed rest that was being imposed on him. Almost absently though, to the background roar of the anxious Zoid currently occupying the otherwise empty hangar, the other walked by a dart board and plucked one of the sharpened objects out.   
  
"Not one to take it slowly, hm?"   
  
Raven made that mistake with Van. He let him live. _I_ made that mistake with Van _and_ Zeke. _I_ let them live. _I died because of it_, Shadow pointed out haughtily, having learned from past mistakes. Standing up on both legs and again seeming to narrow his eyes, he waited for a response. The other only sighed and chucked the dart to the side without even looking at where it would land. If you`re so adament about torturing him, you should get it over with _now_ so that he doesn`t come back stronger!   
  
"Who`d the dart land on?" The other asked, nonchalantly plopping into the recliner that sat across from the couch, crossing one leg over the other with the ankle on the knee and waiting for an answer while sipping his drink.   
  
... How the hell do _I_ know their names?   
  
A sideways glance at the picture on the wall. A brow quirked and Kale Obscura grinned almost sheepishly at the sight before him, leering back at Shadow without a word for a long, tense moment. Theirs was the kind of alliance that could quickly snap into a bid to kill one another, after all, even if they had become something vaguely akin to confident in each others support after the Geno Saurer`s evolution into the Geno Maxis.   
  
"Think you`re up for a fox hunt?" Kale asked, finally breaking the back of the static-based silence between them. At that, Shadow finally spared a look at the picture on the wall, his 'expression' seeming to narrow a bit in annoyance at not knowing the name of whoever the dart had landed on.   
  
Long, light brown hair. Blue eyes. Mild tan and a stripe tattooed onto either arm.   
  
Brad Hunter had just been singled out, against all odds, by one of the single most unrelenting, homicidal - perhaps _genocidal_ - maniacs in _all_ of history.   
  
Kale grinned a bit wider. Several hundred miles away, Naomi Fluegel put down her lukewarm, untouched coffee and felt her heart skip a beat for no apparent reason.   
  


_ End Chapter Sixteen  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** Sure took me long enough, huh? :P  
  
What`d everyone think? Like, no like? Good, bad? Yish, boogledybeh?  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Hopefully THIS proved worth the wait too.  
  
**Illidan:** Don`t expect the next chap any time soon. I`ve been needing to slow down like Hell, I`m only just now realizing it :/  
  
Hope you enjoyed it, leave a review and see ya next time! Sh33p out. 


	17. Eye of the Beholder

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick action and introspect. Instrumentals would work, too.  
  


* * *

  
  
**Reign of Chaos**  
Eye of the Beholder   
  
  
  


In historical texts, there is a quote often attributed solely to the bloodthirsty madman known as Hiltz, a quote about Zoids being their most beautiful whenever they`re engaged in battle. While it`s true that Hiltz was the originator of the modern version of it, the quote was actually dated back to the times when Ancient Zoidians were only just beginning to understand the lethality of the natural beasts with which they formed a triad with.   
  
Zoids are at their pinnacle in battle, of that, there is no doubt. Organoids, though, carried out their life tunes at peak performance when fighting for their lives. Every symphony, every choir`s gospel that their Voices could sing - individually and as a group - were at their best when partaking in a battle. Tunes that no human mind could comprehend and no Zoidian ear - real or imagined - could hear, these were the greatest symphonies ever woven together, heard and judged only by the Zoids they were Bound to, permanently or temporarily.   
  
But the beauty, the true _beauty_ of this three-fold deck of cards, was the pilot. Zoidian or human, a pilot was at his or her most beautiful when engulfed in the moments of battle, that pure, raw feeling that welled up from the bottom of one`s stomach and expanded until it consumed their very soul in the heat of the moment. It was a beauty like none other, it transcended gender and race, even the thin lines that seperated the Zoidians and the humans from one another. It didn`t have to be pleasing on the eye, it was the beauty that few could ever truly grasp.   
  
Right now, Bit Cloud was beautiful. In every way, from the sweat pouring in buckets down his face to the awkward way his hair had been stained a bit darker by pounds of ash that were carried aloft by whipping winds and snow, to the immersive look burned into his grass-green eyes, there were few words to describe him. His voice unknowingly tied to Zeke`s song perfectly, setting the Liger Zero to roar it`s applause as it dove forward, itself having become truly immersed in the battle it waged.   
  
The Proto Breaker was less for the tune and more for the fighting, half of it`s 'face' having been burnt and cut deeply from the outright sadistic reversal of fates that the Liger had caused earlier in the battle, their twisted dance continuing as it dodged that same Zoid`s golden claws and blazed into an almost moonwalking reversal with it`s leg thrusters, leaving a perilous moment where the Liger Zero hung in the air, as if suspended.   
  
Lava soaked the ground almost everywhere in their fiery battlefield, it was as if the two had taken an invitation directly from Hell to come and entertain the devil himself with a dance of death. Flames rippled from burning slag that once called itself rock, the Liger landed almost too perfectly to be real and rebounded from the ground, trailing along at an impossible angle along the canyon wall, flames bursting from beneath it`s feet while the warped Geno Saurer howled it`s displeasure.   
  
Fingerlessly gloved hands clutched the arm raker controls a bit tighter, pulling back one all the way and the other only partially as the Liger`s momentum shifted completely, until it was pointed straight up. The thrusters roared to life as if under their own guidance, instantly damning gravity`s whims and giving the Zoid the added power to make the climb look almost effortless.   
  
Out of Hell and into Purgatory, the Liger Zero emerged, but not unscathed. Metallic 'bruises' lined it`s once solid white armor, scorch marks littered the soles of it`s feet and it`s teeth had been stained an almost yellow shade by the weather, and yet it still fought. It`s pilot was in equal shape, empathically connected - through the body, heart and soul on so many levels that deluded Zoidian blood couldn`t even _hope_ to account for all of it - to the Zoid in such a way that he felt it`s pain, lightly bruising in the same relative areas as the Liger, his palms and the soles of his feet feeling as if he had dipped them in the same lava that the Zoid had repeatedly treaded for spurts of time, never too long though.   
  
His teeth hadn`t been stained, and that was about it. The look on his face was unreadable, bordering somewhere on that nexus of emotions that connected stress with relief, impossible joy with unspeakable rage and saddened defeat with unyielding determination, raggedly breathing as his heart beat right up into his throat and lodged itself there, making it hard just to swallow back the acrid taste left in his mouth by the very air that he had spent the past days breathing. That part of him that was human felt supressed, that part of him that was Zoidian felt frightened and that part of him that was just _him_ was as thrilled as riding a roller coaster.   
  
Bit Cloud wasn`t a murderous psychopath like Kale. He wasn`t a twisted anti-villain like Bill. He was Bit Cloud. No one else. He was only just now starting to understand that, for here he was at his rawest. Not in terms of stress and strain, but in purity. There were _no_ barriers here, fighting for his life against someone he didn`t even know, and he found himself free. Free from the mask of being a careless junk dealer, free from being a pawn in Kale`s headgames, free from being the dimwitted, idiot savant hero, free from his responsibilities and free from being the genius failure in high school, even free from being his ancestral grandmother`s cherished, protected favorite.   
  
For the first time in his life, Bit Cloud was free to be _himself_.   
  
Only time would tell if that was good or bad.   
  
"_I`m not through with you yet_!" Came a sharp, angry proclaimation as the Proto Breaker literally blew out of the canyon in front of the Zero like a bat out of Hell, the result of an about face somewhere in the brief lull of combat that had formerly taken hold, now shattered as the black-and-purple slaughterbeast jolted through the air before it`s engines kicked out, it`s pilot drawing a deep breath while descending with shoulder and nose guns blazing.   
  
"_And I ain`t done with you, either_!" Came the retort, even sharper but decidedly less emotional. A flare of gold, the Liger Zero`s shield burned to life and twin roars clashed in the frost ridden wasteland of Nyx.   
  
  
The door slipped open, an imposing looking desk chair swiveled about and the newly entered commander rigidly straightened up in a salute, breaking from it only after a number of seconds. Vilhelm was unimpressed, almost bored looking, in fact, his green eyes reflecting a subtle menace in the intentionally shadowed lighting that gave the room it`s trademark appearance. Exquisite works of art, mainly statues of Organoids or famous historical villains, were scattered about the office, and the window-wall was shut for the duration, covered by an armor panel that could`ve withstood low level charged particle beams with little trouble.   
  
"The Hellwalker has departed, sir. It`s bylining straight for Farentown, as you ordered."   
  
"Then I take it the implant process worked?" Rommel asked with only minimal concern, the kind that bordered on not caring at all. The underling gave a firm nod, hiding the smile that wanted to be let out. Obviously, he was the time who got a morbid thrill out of scientific advancements, whether he took part in them or not.   
  
"Yes sir. Henry - or Surak, or whatever he calls himself - was implanted into the control system shortly after the remaining weapons were installed across it`s body. The Passifier Unit is keeping him in check, while the physical maintenence systems are keeping him alive and functioning to top capacity. For all intents and purposes, your brother _is_ the Hellwalker," he explained brightly.   
  
"Good. What about the Black Ultra?" Vilhelm asked, unimpressed by his 'brother`s' twisted change into something vaguely similar to an organic AI Processor.   
  
"It launched just under a half an hour ago. The crew is handling transition _very_ well, and to her credit, Turpscavey hasn`t had a single issue with keeping command."   
  
Again, Vilhelm answered with only a slow nod, turning around in his chair as a flash of green ripped through the room, appearing beside a statue of the long dead Ambient with an eerie resemblance. If not for being green and having two less crests to his head, Spectacle would`ve been a shoe-in for his ancient contemporary.   
  
"Feel free to leave now," Rommel stated. "I have business to attend to."   
  
_ That, you do. Serious business, indeed_, the Organoid replied with a hint of a rush to his Voice, obviously glad that the underling couldn`t hear him. Human minds were such fun things to pick at...   
  
_ "Such as?"_ Rommel asked, waiting a few more moments before the commander stepped out and the door slid shut behind him. At that, Spectacle continued, the hint of a rush turning into what almost sounded like a frantic hurry.   
  
_ Kale and Shadow are on their way **here**...   
  
_ Most men - heck, most _human beings_ with any shard of self preservation and sanity would`ve automatically emptied out their lunch into their underwear at that statement. Vilhelm only quirked a brow up. "What for?" He asked again, turning around to face the Organoid with a look that sat firmly between being unintimidated and planning. It was obvious that while Kale was dangerous, Rommel viewed him as a force of nature - an enormous threat that was easily avoided if you played your cards right.   
  
_ I`m unsure. I was only barely able to gleam why from his mind before Shadow detected my presence and shut me out. All I could gather was this:_ **[**_A picture of a man`s face with a dart in it. Long, rough and light brown hair, dimly blue eyes and a light tan to his skin._**]**   
  
"So he`s after our guinea pig. How convenient."   
  
_ Are you insane?!_ Spectacle bellowed, his optics seeming to widen a small bit to convey his shock at that statement in a physical sense.   
  
"No, my dear Organoid. I`m not. We`re going to simply use this to our advantage in the same way any skillful strategist would exploit a tornado wreaking havoc across his enemy. Obscura will annihilate Hunter, possibly taking out Hameros as well - and if we allow them to escape beforehand, he`ll simply track them wherever they go and possibly kill them as they find their friends. We`ll be getting multiple birds with one stone, if you get what I`m saying."   
  
_ And how the **HELL** do you propose we make this look plausible enough to not tip them all off?! Shadow isn`t stupid, I **know** that much of him, and neither is Kale. And what about the plans for the girl?   
  
_ "Leave the majority of that to our dear friend, Bill. Everything else will fall into place on it`s own, but I fear I`ll be having to transfer my command and crew over to the Fatalistic Renegade though... The important ones, anyway."   
  
_ ... You`re even willing to play with the lives of your own underlings like nothing so long as it serves you...   
  
_ "Yes, and?"   
  
_ No wonder I like you_, Spectacle stated with the grim equivelent of an Organoid smile.   
  
  
***BANG!***   
  
An explosion ripped through the already hellish wasteland that was known as Nyx, and the battle raged on. The Proto Breaker trembled briefly as the Liger Zero`s shield crashed headlong into it`s chest, bringing it to a dead stop from a full, straight line burn, but only for the moment as the shield switched off, leaving them both perpetually frozen in what looked like morbid poetry and motion.   
  
Gunshots rang out, the Proto Breaker rocked back on both feet in a stagger, recovering swiftly unleashing a pair of dual lasers from it`s shoulder cannons. The Liger roared indignantly as quad trenches were flash-burnt across it`s shoulder and hip panels, leaving it unscathed in any _real_ way as the silver beams died out. A flash of gold from the claws and the Zero launched forward, swiping out with one foreclaw and drawing the other back.   
  
As expected, Marshall launched one clawed hand up and caught the Liger`s strike, the cable behind the claw-hand holding firm for a moment or two under the forces of momentum, but quickly yielding before it could do anything other than block the first attack, leaving Bit with added time to execute his second strike, stabbing the other clawed paw right into the should of the same arm that had deflected the first attack. Inches of high resistance, multi-alloyed armor gave way to the undeniable force of the same attack that had defeated the Berserk Fury, and on any lesser Zoid, the shoulder would`ve simply broken right in half and left the arm to fly to the ground while the claws continued straight through to the cockpit or further.   
  
The Proto Breaker was _not_ any lesser Zoid.   
  
"You think that cheap-ass move`s gonna beat _me_?! **_WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD, DICKWIT, THIS AIN`T THE ZB-FUCKING-C!_**" Marshall shouted out annoyedly, promptly retracting the claw in and clamping the mutant Geno Saurer`s jaws down around the Liger Zero`s midsection - or as much of it as was possible.   
  
"You think _I_ don`t _know that_ already, you _idiot_?! _I came here to kill you for crying out loud_!" Bit retorted sharply, flailing the Liger around until simply turning the head towards the Proto and activating the shield, causing the two to wrench apart and leaving deep gash marks across the Liger Zero`s stomach and back, just after of one of the thruster units.   
  
One Zoid landed, the other regained it`s balance and the Liger shield rammed the Breaker again, shoving it back once more only for the more experienced - or more criminally insane - Davis to kick on his thrusters and back flip straight over the smaller Liger Zero, sunsetting through the air before landing in a skidding twist, it`s nose gun automatically opening up and laying waste to the muggy, snow and ash covered ground, missing the tarnished-white Zoid by inches as Bit whipped around and dodged out of the way, deactivating the shield ahead of time.   
  
A pause. Neither attacked, but one spoke.   
  
"Why did you come here to kill me, again?" Marshall asked, actually a genuine bit curious over just why a famous Class S Zoid Warrior had journeyed all the way to _Nyx_, of all places, to come and kill him in the middle of a test run. For a long moment, there wasn`t an answer.   
  
"I don`t know. A woman and an Organoid told me to, you`ll just have to take my word for it."   
  
"... **_WHAT THE FUCK KINDA MOTIVATION IS THAT?! PUSSY AIN`T WORTH MURDERIN` FOR!_** ... Well, wait... Was it the good kind?"   
  
A pause. A near audible twitch. Then another. Marshall raised a brow, then -   
  
"**_HELL NO, YOU FUCKING MORON! SHE`S MORE MANLY THAN I AM, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, THE WOMAN BEATS ME OVER THE HEAD WITH A HUNDRED POUND METAL CLUB THAT CAN ELECTRICUTE PEOPLE, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!_**"   
  
- all hell broke loose.   
  
"... Kinky."   
  
"... _Ew_..."   
  
"She got a sister?"   
  
"... You`re disgusting."   
  
"Well **_DUHRRRR_**," Marshall ground out in reply. Another near-audible twitch followed before the Liger roared out something vaguely equivelent to 'get back to fighting, you twits.' Davis didn`t understand and Bit was only barely paying attention, but they both followed orders despite themselves, lashing out at each other once again with claws and guns blazing on the attack.   
  
  
Something stirred. Far removed from civilization, for the first time in... Decades, something stirred.   
  
** [**_A young man in his mid-to-late twenties, the bags under his eyes and the stress on his face obvious. For the first time in... How long? He didn`t know, but it felt like it was the first time he would be climbing into the cockpit, though it also felt like any other time he had done so - even if he couldn`t remember it. A chirp reminded him of something distant, so many memories hidden..._**]**   
  
The time was fast approaching. Gears that had once spent hours turning on the run from Guardians churned to life as an old sentience re-awakened. Probability embodied, it was time.   
  
** [**_He barely even knew his own name anymore, barely even understood **why** he had built this... **Thing** to replace another thing he could no longer even remember with more than blurred, passing images. Perhaps it had been close to him? And pain. He remembered pain everytime **she** walked around him. Unsteadily, he lowered into the custom-made cockpit chair. It was roomy, maybe more so than his old Zoid? What had it been, before? Something about a... A bull? He didn`t remember though._**]**   
  
A low growl, pitched with an eternally threatening tone echoed as sands whipped up around the creature`s body, a leg that had been encrusted with dirt and grime finally moving, however squeakily it did so. Sands and dirt, dust and so much else were scrubbed off by movements, then repelled by a sub-system only a genius would think to include.   
  
Or the creation of a genius.   
  
** [**_Cautiously, he eased his hands onto the controls, getting a feel for them. They weren`t the usual for such a Zoid, he had been told. Not that it mattered very much...   
  
"Alright, Thomas. How`re things on your end?"   
  
A friendly, cheerful - if not somewhat senile - voice asked, jarring him a bit. Uneasily though, he nodded and flipped a switch, showing the image of a balding old hippy of a man with long, white hair down to his mid-back. "Thomas?" The man asked. The name still didn`t feel right, was it **really** his?_**]**   
  
Old, red optics flared to life for the first time since it had become frozen in place, an ancient mind reflecting... Concern? Malice, perhaps? Maybe that part that hadn`t ever quite gone away?   
  
** [**_"Thomas? Is everything alright?" He repeated for the second or third time.   
  
"Fine. I`m fine, don`t worry... Just a little... Out of it, right now."   
  
"We could always do this when you`re feeling better," the man suggested a bit hesitantly. Obviously, he wanted to get this done, for whatever reason. "It`s not like the Mark II`ll be going anywhere, yanno..."   
  
"**No**," he replied with more authority than intended. "I have to do this **now**..."   
  
Why though? He thought he heard the doctor mumble something in surrender but he didn`t pay enough attention. With a bit of his own hesitation, he reached up and pulled down the helmet - it looked familiar. Was it the same one? And what had caused him to think **that**? A sigh and he put his hands back to the controls, ignoring the sudden buzz in his ears and focusing on bringing the hulk of a Zoid to life.   
  
Something was wrong though._**]**   
  
No. Not malice. Misunderstanding then? Who knew...   
  
** [**_"The... The controls aren`t responding..."   
  
Something ticked at the back of his mind. The doctor`s voice suddenly became all-too distant as images began to trickle across the helmet`s visor. At first they were just... Blurred, but clarity... Slowly, clarity began to form there, an image of...   
  
** Her**.   
  
Not the other one, the one that brought him a heartfelt pain, but the one he felt instinctive fear from. What had her name been? **Damn it**, what had her name been?!   
  
"Lll... Liese? No..." That wasn`t right.   
  
And then the image became clearer than before, she was standing over someone and... And...   
  
"Oh... God..."   
  
"Thomas? Thomas! Speak to me!"   
  
The only reply came in the form of a pitched, agonized scream as the huge construct began to tremble and strain against everything around it, mirroring the pain of it`s hostage pilot._**]**   
  
An old calculations routine played through, an artificial intelligence shifted uneasily and the immense bulk of the still-revolutionary Zoid turned almost perfectly to aim towards a singular location. The out-of-date map registered it as Gyran Base, but a modern map would`ve listed it by it`s simpler, civilian name.   
  
Champton.   
  
** [**_"**THOMAS?!**"_**]**   
  
Old hoverskate thrusters that still seemed as revolutionary as the Zoid itself actually _was_, even after over two _hundred_ years, burned to life, causing a dim, white glow from beneath colossal feet, sending the sands flying about as the ancient creature was sent skimming through the desert towards it`s destination.   
  
  
Claws slashed through the air, gold met silver and whipped apart, silver retreating as the Liger touched down while the Proto Breaker backpedaled out of the way, the snow vaporizing and the ash smogging as ground burnt into an imprint of the unconventionally made weapon, leaving the two frozen for a moment before resuming their struggle.   
  
It was becoming increasingly apparent that while the Zoids were unevenly matched against each other, the pilots were even more so. Marshall Davis had spent roughly a decade of his life in the cockpit, he had reached his piloting limit and relied mostly on tricks and technique to see him threw, while Bit Cloud had all of a half a year - at _most_ - at the controls of the Liger Zero and was easily able to surpass him as far as reflexes and improvising his tactics went.   
  
In short, Davis was relying on what he knew to survive against the raw _talent_ of the other pilot. Even with a massive edge in firepower, even with vastly more experience and even with more skill, he was _still_ being pushed to his limits by the younger of the two.   
  
That pissed him off to no ends.   
  
"Hey, Blondie!" He shouted in the midst of their clash, the Proto Breaker`s jaws snapping shut on thick, disgusting air with a metallic clank, missing the intended target as the Liger Zero swept out of the way and whipped around, firing it`s main gun off without even aiming. One explosion ripped from the side of the mutant Geno`s head, leaving it to briefly stumble sideways from the impact before righting itself.   
  
"What?" The aforementioned blonde pilot asked hotly.   
  
"What the fuck _are you_, anyway?"   
  
"Huh?"   
  
"No rookie can fight like that," Marshall deduced bluntly, turning the Breaker and facing the Liger with half-blurred eyes. Combat had a way of draining people significantly. Even after years of experience, Marshall was still just a normal human, the nerve wracking effects of having to take on an opponent dedicated to killing you in the environment of Nyx, cramped up in the cockpit of a modified Geno Saurer were taking their toll on him.   
  
Bit wasn`t even getting started yet.   
  
"Guess I`m just different then, huh?" Bit asked, taking the moment to reach up one hand and nonchalantly wipe his entire face off on the back of his glove, immediately coming close to regretting it since it smeared ash over him as a result, but making up for it afterward by wiping the glove off and doing it again.   
  
It left a gap at the convenient time that Marshall chose to pull the trigger, sending off a barrage of dumbfire rockets from the legs of the Proto Breaker, every last one that he could fire. If not for Zeke, Bit would`ve been blown to smithereens, but the Liger`s shield kicked on almost automatically, blocking every single shot from hitting the tarnished Zoid, though the sides were burnt a near ash-black by the numerous explosions that the shield _couldn`t_ cover up.   
  
A pair of loud clacks, followed by six or eight progressively smaller ones and the sound of building energy informed Bit that he had again played right into the other pilot`s hand.   
  
"Shit."   
  
  
A pat on the back. It was a gesture of comfort and sympathy, often precursing a squeeze on the shoulder. The squeeze happened, and it garnered no response. Not even a blink. At most, his breathing shifted slightly, but even that was negligible. Short cut, dark blonde hair that would probably grow to a light brown with age settled in a mess atop his head, his clothes were slightly stained along the seat of the pants and the bottom-back of the shirt, one elbow had been scraped up a bit and his face still had trails of moisture which had begun to dry. They weren`t being continued though.   
  
He hadn`t spoken. They didn`t know his name, didn`t know his age, didn`t know if he had any other family and didn`t know if he had anyone who could take care of him. He was a kid. They guessed him to be around the age of five but none of them really knew since he was silent on the matter. He was silent on _everything_.   
  
"I give, man," one of them said with resignation. "He isn`t even _blinking_, for Christ`s sake..."   
  
"_Mark_," another started with an authoritative tone, practically snapping the first back out of his annoyance. Most people would`ve dimly chuckled at the antics the man performed, going from resigned, normal guy to little more than a speaking lap dog in under half a second. The hand on his shoulder gave a squeeze. The oldest member of the group, the one in the corner in front of him, gave a thoughtful pause and spoke up.   
  
"We need to give the kid a name, even if he ain`t gonna speak to us anytime soon," the man said with a small nod. At that, the handsome one spoke up, though he looked as if he was busy trying to keep the woman next to him from breaking into a death lunge for the one who was trying to give the kid comfort.   
  
"Could just _check the fucking Gustav he got out of_," he said as if it was the easiest thing in the world. At that, an explosion shocked through the streets and almost everyone ducked. Except for the five who were paying attention to him, they all just glanced at the one who had made the suggestion with a deadpan look that would`ve been well accompanied with 'Just _had_ to say it, huh?' Obviously, none of them were surprised. The fifth one shrugged a bit absently and started whistling out an old tune to himself, and everything went back to normal.   
  
Or about as normal as it could get.   
  
"Sounds like the guys outside need some help," the one now identified as Mark blithely pointed out, leaving the oldest of the group to take charge again.   
  
"I`ll be back in ten. And Abbie," he paused, getting his gloves on, then his jacket. The woman next to the kid perked up a bit, shifting her attention over to the one who`d called her by name. "Keep an eye on that kid, will ya? He`s had it rough `n all..."   
  
Abbie just gave a nod.   
  
"Later," the man said, leaving with a half-wave through the kitchen. If the boy had been around longer, he would`ve known that the older fellow kept his Zoid in a hangar on the other side of the small alleyway that the kitchen exited into. He didn`t know that though, he didn`t even care.   
  
"Well... What do we call `im?" The handsome one asked bluntly, leaning back on the couch with the ponytailed woman who still looked ready to fly across the room and tackle Abbie through the nearest wall. Obviously, they weren`t on the nicest of terms with each other.   
  
"Well, we could always call `im... Ted?" Mark suggested thoughtlessly, the lack of action combined with the sleep deprivation starting to get to him. Again. Abbie shook her head. "No, that doesn`t sound right," she stated, earning a quirked brow from the other two who were actually speaking. Most of the others in the diner had gone back to the business of trying to sleep or trying to eat.   
  
"Why not?" The other woman finally asked, her voice still a bit taut from something that happened earlier.   
  
"Well," Abbie paused, glancing over at Mark with an outright devilish look on her face. "'_Ted_ Harlock' doesn`t sound too fitting, now does it?"   
  
At that, Mark let out a yelp and crashed to the floor.   
  
  
It sounded akin to glass shattering, and it looked something like it too, like a gold pane of being blown into thousands of pieces by the awe inspiring force of the charged particle cannon. It hadn`t been a full powered beam, Marshall hadn`t had the time to power up enough for such an attack, but it had still been powerful enough to vape through the shield and scream at the Liger itself.   
  
Zeke had been the only thing that saved the day, and even then, a black, scorched trench had burnt it`s way across the Liger`s back, right between the thrusters and over the tail, which would`ve been annihilated had the Ultimate X not ducked down when it did, along with the head and everything straight through the Zoid itself.   
  
The beam continued to fire though, and that was Marshall`s mistake. Bit was determined to make it his last.   
  
"Funny thing about charged particle weapons," he observed, shifting just so as the beam began to thin towards it`s conclusion. "They leave ya in a fixed spot!"   
  
Thrusters flared, the beam finished dying and the Liger`s claws flared up with a golden glow, knifing through the air in a blinding moment as lightning struck in the background, tearing through heavy snow and ashen rains at once before sinking firmly into the top layer of cockpit armor. Davis didn`t even have the chance to scream as the second layer gave way, then the third and fourth before the monitor in front of him shattered into thousands of slagging bits of plastic and glass, sparks flittering forward before the Strike Laser Claw claimed him, just like it had so many others back in the canyon mere days earlier.   
  
For a moment, the Zoids themselves froze, the Proto Breaker standing with a near 'expression' of shock, slowly righting before it`s legs gave way, the claw punching out of it`s back and gashing through the flight unit in place there, stained with evaporating blood and newly-burning bits of clothing. Two great predators, one kneeling, the other standing while leaned against it, teeth driven into the mutant Geno`s shoulder, the other claw gripping ferally to it`s hip, supported mainly by it`s prey and it`s own hind legs.   
  
The Breaker`s eyes dimmed, it`s tail fell to the ground with a dull thump and the Liger`s claws lost their glow, drawn away with the rest of the battle damaged Zoid, which stood triumphantly over it`s downed foe like a great champion having achieved a relatively meaningless victory.   
  
Silence.   
  
And then thunder.   
  
And then, Zeke`s song ended with the Ultimate X Liger Zero belting out a massive cry of victory to the heavens themselves, which responded with even louder gusts of wind, dying down in tune with the Liger itself, with slowly calmed to regard it`s downed foe.   
  
"Too bad," Bit commented, unphased by the most recent killing he`d made. He was honestly becoming _numb_ to it all, and if he had stopped to think about that fact, it probably would`ve disturbed him. Probably.   
  
"If I`d met you under different circumstances, we could`ve been pretty good friends. Oh well."   
  
With that, the Liger began to limp away, the Proto Breaker exploding some time later as prying eyes watched on two differing fronts.   
  
  
"They did better than we thought they would," Madison commented, about as surprised as her utterly bland voice could sound, which itself would`ve made Mister Spock sound like an over-emotional drug addict. She was unphased by the weather, though the air did dirty her appearance, not that it made much of a difference since she rarely bathed, rendered as clean as Roc thought she needed to be through subtle telekinesis, which was currently unable to get the grit off.   
  
For the first time in her own memory, Madison Rose actually felt like doing something that didn`t mean life or death. She wanted to take a bath. That was it.   
  
** Zeke played too integral a role towards the end, but I suppose it was inevitable.   
  
** "The next test will make Three stand on his own," she replied. The enormous Zoid/Organoid thing beside and behind her seemed impassive, it`s actual expression shifting slightly.   
  
** Assuming it does not kill him.   
  
** "Assuming."   
  
  
Elsewhere though, the reaction was less... Restrained.   
  
"We just lost GSV-01," one of a dozen scientists muttered aloud, tongue in cheek. "To the fucking _Liger Zero_, no less," he added, obviously unaware as to just _how_ a _tournament show-off Zoid_ that had been _reported_ as being over a thousand _miles_ away had just shown up and eviscerated one of the most dangerous prototype _war_ Zoids in living memory in _under_ an hour.   
  
There were days where the universe just didn`t make any sense. This, unfortunately, was one of them.   
  
"How the _hell_ did this happen?!" He demanded, though a firm tap on the shoulder drove him out of his annoyance.   
  
"Don`t worry about it. We`ve just gotten our first livefire testing subject, that`s all," Mary Sandler stated with an almost perversely casual tone to her voice. "If he got here, he`s probably stranded here, and we needed to test some of the experiments on this base more thoroughly in combat conditions, anyway."   
  
"Exactly," came another voice, that of Commander Heinrich Brogan, the chief officer on the base. "All it means is that our tests are going to be a little more realistic. Besides, if the Proto Breaker couldn`t handle a single, non-war-fitted Liger, it wasn`t going to be much use on the battlefield, and neither was Davis for that matter," he said with a cold, military logic to his reasoning, stepping up to the console and looming darkly over the scientist. "And naturally, Mary, _you_ will be going next."   
  
Any other woman would`ve thought it a suicide mission. Sureshot just rolled her eyes and stood up straight from where she`d been leaning over the chair of the annoyed scientist, cracking her knuckles in reverse and then asking a fairly simple, straight-to-the-point answer.   
  
"_When_?"   
  
"Tomorrow afternoon. I expect you`ll be ready?"   
  
"Of course."   
  
At that, Sandler walked out of the monitor room without so much as a sound, seeming to fade into the hallway and out of sight without anyone ever even noticing her exit. She hadn`t been the most feared assassin in organized crime`s danger-filled underworld for nothing, after all. To her, this was just another job, another chance to prove to her employers that her name hadn`t been given to her for nothing, among other things.   
  
For Bit Cloud, it would prove to be a trial by fire he would never forget.   
  


_ End Chapter Seventeen  
  
_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Poor Mark, eh? XD  
  
**Zinou:** Got to you, as usual, through an IM :P  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Didn`t think Rayth and Kyle`s seeming enmity a while back was over **nothing**, now did you?  
  
**Illidan:** Under **that** schedule, I`d end up dying of food and sleep deprivation and the story would never be finished at all :P  
  
**The Big Fisch:** I **have** burnt myself out. Twice, actually, first when writing Generations and second when I was burning through the latter chapters of NA and the more recent chapters of ROC. Thankfully, I seem to be getting better now. I hope.  
  
Well folks, what`d ya think? Leave it in a review, perhaps? Anyway, read, enjoy, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	18. Stop and Reflect

  
  
**Foreword:** If ya got it, play it. This one kinda fits just about anything...  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Stop and Reflect   
  
  
  


A roar of VTOL thrusterfire, the silhouette of a Hammerhead II became obvious amid the background of the forest that surrounded the almost invisible log cabin, hidden from prying eyes by the innumerable trees that covered the entirety of the mountain it was situated on, leaving only sparse clearings here and there, this one was only barely big enough to accomodate for the Hammerhead, the cabin itself and the slight accessory that made it stick out like a sore thumb.   
  
The still-recovering Razorwind Fury growled a neutral 'hello' to the newly arriving Zoid, stepping out from behind the cabin and holding it`s position, shimmering somewhat in the early morning light. It was obvious that it had been self-healing on it`s own, possessing only three of it`s six lasersaw arms and still bearing out a massive, if not shallow, crater across it`s chest.   
  
Stump-like legs extended from the bottom of the small carrier, rooting it to the ground as it touched down, powerful shock absorbers yielding to the force of gravity for a few moments before springing back, moving the Zoid up and down by mere inches before it stopped, thrusters cutting out and a staircase automatically flipping down from it`s left side, just aft of the left hammer-section.   
  
Almost a minute passed by before the door behind the stairs slid open, exposing a plain looking nerd of a man in his early twenties, dressed in the garb of a team mechanic, though the white jumpsuit he wore was zipped down a bit at the collar, exposing the top of the short sleeved, gray shirt he wore underneath. The remains of a metallic, blue insect were nonchalantly flung to the side before his ungloved hands tucked themselves into his jumpsuit`s hip pockets, leaving the man to idly step down to the ground, paying no actual attention to the huge mechanical creature that would`ve caused most people to turn yellow and run away.   
  
"Yo! Vega!" He shouted out, spotting that one of the windows was open. Before he even finished speaking though, the door to the cabin swung open and a boy who looked somewhere between the age of eleven or twelve walked into view, dressed in a hawaiian-styled button-up T-shirt and a pair of shorts, no shoes though.   
  
"I`ve been expecting you," he stated bluntly before continuing. "And next time you see a blue, mechanical insect, don`t kill it."   
  
The initial words hadn`t caught Lars off-guard. The second string though, made him raise an eyebrow.   
  
"Kat is-" "With her boyfriend, and Dana is at home. I know," Vega cut him off. "I`ll explain everything once we get inside, but before that, I`m going to give you a warning."   
  
Pause. Lars didn`t move an inch, didn`t even speak since he feared that the boy would cut him off again.   
  
"Step into that door, agree to do what I`m going to ask of you and I can`t guarantee your survival. There`s a very real possibility that you`ll die before the end of the month," Obscura warned, living up to his name in spades by the dozen, though next up, it was Lars who took the initiative, raising one finger up to push his glasses back into place with a bland smirk.   
  
"I could use the excitement."   
  
  
The swish of a door opening up to the bridge of the Empress Heart alerted Sarah to take her eyes off of the communications monitor, which was currently being seen to by one of the refugees they`d picked up out of Romeo, a good _chunk_ of which happened to be at least partially skilled in the workings of civilian and military technologies to some degree. Given Leyon`s background in designing the whole Whale King from the frame inward, that came in handy, especially since he blended civilian and military technologies so much.   
  
Simply put: A military communications officer would`ve been completely _dumbfounded_ to handle all of the communications equipment on the Empress Heart. A civilian IT manager on the other hand...   
  
"You called?" Came the half-tired reply from the bubblegum pink/red-haired girl who came partially stumbling into the room, _still_ clad in her civilian clothes, like she had been for the past... Days. No one had really had the time to _bathe_ too much and it was starting to show on almost everyone _but_ Leena. It seemed, in her case, that a bit of grime couldn`t really put her looks down, at least not any further than they already were.   
  
"They won`t let us go any closer to Champton without verification, and since none of them know your father, Brad, Bit and Jamie aren`t present, _you_ will have to do."   
  
"They didn`t know any of _them_, either. They don`t even know _me_," Leena sardonically pointed out, pushing an errant hair or two out of her face and yawning. The scars on her face...   
  
"Do you think Harry gave them up-to-date information?" Sarah asked, almost immediately smacking herself for not remembering the obvious changes the scars caused to Leena`s appearance. She hadn`t ever known the girl before she`d been given the lightning bolt treatment by Kale, she didn`t know what she looked like before the scars, only that she`d dressed and acted _far_ differently. If Harry hadn`t updated his people about her changes, then...   
  
"I don`t know," Leena shrugged, crashing a bit of Sarah`s hope right off the bat before nonchalantly walking up and bending down to face the screen up close, nudging the man at the console out of the way in the process. Sarah moved a reasonably safe distance behind her with a sigh, thanking her lucky stars that Steven and Leyon weren`t present. Both were, more than likely, passed out somewhere after spending six hours arguing about the proper tools to use to screw or nail something into place.   
  
She liked them both, Steven was a nice, smart guy with his fair share of quirks, Leyon was too smart for his own good and an easy target with his ego, but together? They _grated_ on her. _Badly_.   
  
"Hello?"   
  
"... You`re not Leena Tauros!" Sounded from the other end of the line.   
  
"Yes, I am," Leena snapped back, a bit surprised.   
  
"Mister Champ left a _specific_ list of recognizable details, honey, and _you_ don`t match up."   
  
"... _How so_?" _"Ten seconds... To core meltdown,"_ Sarah muttered in dry thought, taking another step back and getting ready to plug her ears till it hurt.   
  
"Let`s see..." A pause. The man brought up a three foot long sheet of copy paper, promptly going through them all. "You`re ugly, you don`t have the voice of an angel from heaven, you don`t have good fashion sense, your eyes don`t sparkle like the water on a moonlit night, your skin isn`t a blissfully pale ti-" "_**WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY, YOU LITTLE PENCIL NECKED DESK JOCKEY SON OF A BITCH?!**_"   
  
There was a distinct ***Whump*** on the other end of the line, preceeding a yelp of abstract terror and shock. Afterward...   
  
"Yeah, you`re her," he said in a near-squeak, the screen going blank a second later and leaving a blank eyed, dangerously psychotic looking Leena Tauros glaring at it, probably all of a tenth of a micron from frothing at the mouth and screeching like a deranged hyena.   
  
"Did you hear that?" Sarah asked after a moment, yanking her fingers from her ears as if nothing had happened and then glancing at the small pop-up screen on the main monitor, apparently one of the only people not leveled by Leena`s outburst. It was a miracle that none of the Redler Interceptors or Pteras Bombers flying formation around the Empress Heart hadn`t dropped out of the sky.   
  
"Yes, ma`am... You`re clear to land in port sixteen," the apparent squadron leader half-mumbled out in surrender, leading her Redlers away without another word.   
  
_ "Note to self,"_ Susan began, cautiously glancing at the still-irate looking girl leaning precariously at the main communications console, a helpless worker practically _trapped_ next to her.   
  
_ "Keep that girl on call in case I get anymore wise-asses."   
  
_   
The roar of the wind, the dull hum of assisted regeneration and the gasp of hydraulics all filled his ears at once - while nothing short of putrid _death_ wreaked into his nostrils, tainting his already fading sense of victory, even as several pounds of hot ash flaked onto his skin and clothing, initially soothed and then outdone by the frigid tingle of as many pounds of snow, leaving him disoriented in the extreme as the harness flipped up, which in turn left him to drunkenly falter out of the cockpit, falling down almost thirty feet into the rank, blackened mixture of ash and snow on the ground.   
  
He sank in another foot and then stopped on contact with ground that felt like metal, so cold that it could pass for ice with minimal trouble. Almost robotically, he made his way back to his feet and forced his eyes open in a squint, hearing the voice of emotionless reprimand almost instantly.   
  
"We`d`ve thought you would`ve gotten used to the climate by now. Apparently, we overestimated you."   
  
"_Shut up_, damn you! I just went through Hell to get back here, Liger`s _still_ hurting!" Bit retorted sharply, if not a bit weakly. He really _was_ feeling his Zoid`s pain, and quite frankly, it _hurt_.   
  
"If you went through Hell, why are you still standing there?" Came the only passingly-feminine voice in reply, followed by the source stepping a bit closer. If Madison`s voice were any deeper, and her face just a bit rougher, she could`ve passed as a man. Obviously, she hadn`t spent her childhood with dreams of playing Suzy Homemaker, if she`d even _had_ dreams to begin with. As far as Bit could tell, the woman was little more than an extension of Roc`s will, at least that was how she acted. Maybe it was in reverse, he didn`t know.   
  
He didn`t really care either.   
  
It was hard to care when you were in so much pain from the very _air_ you were breathing that you were starting to have trouble standing up.   
  
"I guess I just went in one way and came back out the other end... Then fell right back in," he mumbled out defeatedly, feeling the now-instinctive urge to raise his guard.   
  
She was too quick. Again. She was _always_ too quick, the woman made Kale look like a freaking paraplegic _slug_ for crying out loud.   
  
There was a loud ***CRACK*** that Bit could clearly identify as the sound of the club he had nicknamed Thor`s Hammer smashing across the side of his head with enough force to turn the average human being`s brain into a sloppy mush that could pass as scrambled eggs, leaving him to fly through the air and crash into the snow. On his head.   
  
It was a testimate to his thick skull that he wasn`t killed instantly, far from it in fact. With a solemn curse under his breath, he slowly began to get up from lying on his stomach, his vision blurred and his head throbbing, just like the rest of him was.   
  
"You`re getting better," Madison observed, just loudly enough that he could hear it. There was no pride in her voice, hell, there was _nothing_ in her voice but the facts, which left Bit to come to a rather annoying conclusion of his own a second later.   
  
"If I get good enough, I`m`a crack yer fuckin` head open and spray yer brains out on thuh snow..."   
  
And with that rather drunken sounding comment, Bit Cloud passed out. He landed with a thump on the snow and didn`t budge an inch further. That was when Roc interjected, having been somewhat stirred by the blonde`s comment.   
  
** I would _love_ to see him try...   
  
**_ Aren`t you supposed to be the mature one, here?   
  
_** A bit of madness is cherished by even the wisest, Zeke. You would do well to partake of it.   
  
**   
A skidding stop, dirt shifted under feet that weighed three or four times as much as an ordinary minivan, and even through that, the only true sound was that of the thrusters kicking off. Footsteps followed suit seconds later, heavy but quiet, even somewhat light, as if the creature were trying to keep from alerting any defenses in the area.   
  
** [**_"Oh good, you`re awake."_**]**   
  
With precision uncanny for such a large construct, the beast virtually tip-toed it`s way up the side of the hill, treading with caution where most would`ve foolishly flung themselves over the peak and been detected instantly as a result. It was strange, seeing something of that size hunched over, carefully sneaking about, as if it had the foreknowledge that Champton`s defense grid didn`t extend to the side of the hill it stood on.   
  
** [**_"What happened?" He asked slowly, his speech slurred. It was a hospital bed, again, just like it had been when he`d first woken up with no recollection of who he was. The perverted old coot of a scientist was sitting in the chair next to his bed, an adult magazine hidden in his Scientific Weekly Journal.   
  
He felt violated for some reason - in his mind, even though he didn`t even know what had happened after that first scream.   
  
"The doctors say you`ll be just fine after a bit o` rest," Dee stated, shutting his 'paper' and nodding. Thomas - the name seemed to **fit** now - took a passing glance at him, almost instantly feeling worry.   
  
"You need to get your breathing checked," he ordered immediately, causing the older man to raise a brow. "Eh?"   
  
"It`s a bit too shallow," Thomas informed him, sitting up and scooting back in the bed, his movements bearing an eerie precision to them. "And your right elbow may need to be checked out too," he added, leaning back against the pillows.   
  
"Thomas, what the heck are you talking about?"_**]**   
  
There it stood, frozen in place, waiting. It`s tail, thick and lengthy, ideal for balance and attack at the same time, trailed down by almost the length of it`s body, holding steady and lying on the ground. An ancient growl echoed, and then...   
  
** [**_Before he could answer, the door slipped open again, and Thomas` heart dropped down into his stomach in an instant as two people entered. One was a short man, aged to about twenty, perhaps a bit older, his hair kept mostly in a tight ponytail at the back, with a face that instinctively made Thomas want to punch something.   
  
Then there was her. She was a bit shorter than her companion, and whereas he made Thomas want to punch something, her very presence made him want to scream his eyes out.   
  
"How`re you feeling?" She asked, practically draped across the brown haired man`s arm. Instantly, Thomas found himself able to see something was wrong with the man.   
  
"Van," he began, not really sure if that was even the guy`s name. He didn`t finish though, looking as if he was at something of an impass.   
  
"What?" The one he`d guessed was named Van asked in reply, his free hand hanging at his side, though his other arm was draped around the blonde woman`s waist. "Something wrong?"   
  
"... No. Nothing`s wrong," came the answer, even if he was lying. There`d been a weakness in the brunette man, Thomas could practically smell it. That armored shirt he wore, it didn`t offer an ounce of protection for the stomach, or the bottom of the rib cage, and his legs seemed a bit weak in the knees.   
  
Anyone else, Thomas would`ve told them, he was sure of it. For some reason here though, he didn`t say anything.   
  
"I`d like to be alone, please," he asked, looking a bit older almost instantly. Everyone else in the room seemed a bit taken aback, but Doctor Dee, at least, had no trouble with complying, standing up and promptly dragging the other two out without another word.****_]   
  
Nothing.   
  
** [**_The door shut. He was alone again, just like he`d asked.   
  
A few seconds ticked by, and green eyes shifted around, settling on a stack of neatly folded clothing in the corner, a dark green jumpsuit, thick brown gloves, black combat boots, a utility belt and a heavy looking trench coat with no sleeves. He instinctively knew his boxers were hidden in the pile too, all of which combined to make his mind up for him.   
  
"I have to go back," he thought, almost regretting that he ever even heard himself think it. "I have to get back into that thing. I have to find out how it changed me and I have to find out if it really **is** the key to my past," he reasoned, not even knowing **how** these thoughts were making themselves known to him now, rather than before. It was like a thousand flashes below the surface, an intense feeling of self-awareness, and awareness of others, that he hadn`t ever felt before.   
  
All of it had a purpose though, and as he got to his feet and got dressed, he understood that.   
  
His purpose was simple, explained to him in the subconscious by the mental flash of a blue haired woman, visible for all of a nanosecond before his brain shut the image down, lest it threaten to shatter his already fragile psyche. She was the real key, but to get to her, he would need to get to others. The list of objectives was clear now, he knew that much.   
  
"I just wish I knew how," he thought, pulling his last glove on and turning towards the door. They were still standing there, talking. Oh well, he`d just have to wait then._**]**   
  
Absolutely nothing.   
  
  
** Wake up.   
  
** And with a jolt, he did just that. The atmosphere still stung just as bitterly as ever, his eyelids felt like lead weights and his skin felt like an agonizing mixture of frigidly wet and painfully hot dryness, leaving his clothes to weigh heavily on him with the added mass of snow and ash that had collected in the threads. His T-shirt and the armored shirt over it were both stiff, half-wet and half-dry, and his pants didn`t feel much better.   
  
Awkwardly, he forced himself back up to his feet, teeth chattering together, the Handleblade`s hilt poking lightly at his back, and yet...   
  
He was alone. The area around him felt like a deep pit, almost, running at a few feet above his own head and continuing along until he realized that it wasn`t a pit, but a trench. The ground was smooth beneath the snow, and when he moved to take a step, he realized that it was pitch black and prone to cracking with little real trouble. After a few seconds though, the blonde shifted onto one foot and shook himself off, though it was only good enough for him to move around a bit more easily.   
  
And then he heard the voices.   
  
"It`s time, Bit Cloud."   
  
"Time for what?" He demanded, turning towards the source of the first voice and finding that Madison was standing at the edge of the trench, outside of it but perilously close to falling in. To either side of her stood two hulking figures, one seeming eternally majestic, like the disgusting winds couldn`t even touch it, towering over the other two with an innate grace that seemed to make it look like a deity in some long forgotten pantheon.   
  
_ Your test.   
  
_ "Zeke?" Bit asked, taking a step towards the edge of the trench and finding that he couldn`t move any further.   
  
_ I can`t help you this time_, the Organoid said, sounding a bit regretful.   
  
"What? What the hell _is_ this?" Bit demanded, raising an arm up to shield his eyes from the glare of the eternally setting sun, not to mention the sudden gust of torturous snow and ash that blew down from above.   
  
** Why are you here?   
  
** "Because you _fuckers_ dragged me out here! Duh!"   
  
"You could`ve said no."   
  
** Why are you here?   
  
** "Because I said yes! Happy?!" Bit answered annoyedly, suddenly shifting his eyes on an almost instinctive reflex to the red and orange glow visible in the distance, some ways down the trench he was currently stuck in.   
  
"You could have said _no_."   
  
** Why are you here?   
  
** "I don`t know!"   
  
"Then why did you say yes?"   
  
"_I don`t know_!" Bit yelled with authority this time, taking a step back and finding that he could only move in a straight line. Forward or back, he couldn`t move in any other directions. The glow became brighter, he could hear fire churning in the distance, so dangerously close to being in his sights.   
  
** Why are you here?   
  
** "I told you," He growled out, fear turning into contempt and a sideways glance being thrown at the towering Organoid who stood nearby on Madison`s flank. He couldn`t see the Liger Zero anymore, he didn`t dare to turn his head to do so.   
  
"No. You didn`t. You only threw out excuses."   
  
**_ Why_ are you _here_?   
  
** "**_GOD DAMNIT, I DON`T KNOW! WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF QUESTION IS THIS?!_**"   
  
And at that moment, the glow stopped being just a light he could barely see, slopping around the corner ahead of him as a lava flow, fire belching out from above, moving at a near water-like speed. "Oh shit..."   
  
"Just answer the question."   
  
** WHY ARE YOU HERE?!   
  
**** [**_Faces._**]**   
  
The lava came closer, gaining speed even as time itself began to slow down.   
  
** [**_Names._**]**   
  
Every instinct, every single ounce of self-preservation in his body screamed to turn and run.   
  
** [**_People._**]**   
  
But he didn`t.   
  
** [**_Friends._**]**   
  
Instead of doing what he should have and making a futile run for his life, Bit Cloud stood his ground and grit his teeth until it hurt. The heat from the lava itched at his flesh, flaking away ash and melting the snow from him, and yet he stood there. The answer was clear to him.   
  
"Well?" Madison asked calmly, willing to let him die where he stood without so much as an inkling of remorse.   
  
"For them," Bit muttered to himself, even as the lava whipped towards him, time speeding back up in a blur of motion that would`ve made his head spin. Without regret, he closed his eyes and braced himself, throwing his arms up to his face and continuing to hold his ground.   
  
** Good.   
  
** And with that, Bit Cloud vanished from sight, engulfed in the fires of Hell itself.   
  
  
"So... In short, what you`re saying is that... The shit`s hit the fan, right?" Lars asked. He hadn`t been prepared for everything Vega had told him, from the state of the world at large to the events concerning Kale and numerous other things, ranging from things called the 'Hellwalker' and the 'Black Ultra,' both of which sounded like they could level cities in minutes.   
  
"Basically speaking," Vega answered bluntly, leaning against the frame of the door and watching Specular on the couch. The Organoid hadn`t moved an inch since she`d collapsed earlier. "Which is why I want you to take me to Nyx."   
  
"That place is forbidden though," Lars pointed out almost reflexively, _more_ than remembering how many times his flight instructors back at the academy had told him about the dangers of even going _near_ that part of the world. "Has a Rare Hertz effect, doesn`t it?"   
  
"No. If it did, I wouldn`t be able to see there," Vega answered. "What _is_ there though, is the very likely possibility of our deaths, as well as the chance for the planet`s salvation."   
  
"So basically, you`re asking me to take you to Hell."   
  
"You don`t have to, Lars," the boy clarified tiredly, straightening up off the wall. "I can probably get there myself if Specular were in better shape, but she isn`t. Breaking out of the Fury, then trying to heal it _and_ me has all left her too drained to manage a serious teleport like that. That`s why I need you. You`re the only person I know who`s free, can pilot the Foe Hammer and who I can trust to do this."   
  
"And you`ve come to that conclusion, _how_?" The nerd asked a bit cynically.   
  
"Because. You`ve got no family to be with, your crush is busy elsewhere, Dana doesn`t care enough since she thinks we`re both fine, and you`ve got ties to the Five Kings program. Al`s brother wouldn`t sell me out, I know that much," Vega said, and meant it. He had a great deal of trust for Lars, probably more than for Kat or Dana put together. Lars had been a witness to some of the things that happened during the Five Kings project, he had a tie to most of the pilots for as long as his brother had been alive and he wouldn`t neglect it without a _very_ good reason.   
  
Apparently, his own survival wasn`t reason enough for that to happen.   
  
"I`ll go then. How`re we gonna get the blue wonder out the door though?" He asked, standing up from the table he`d been sitting at the entire time and peeking over at the unconscious Organoid lying on the couch like she owned it. "Doesn`t look like she`s light enough to just drag her out or anything..."   
  
Vega facefaulted.   
  
"I hadn`t thought about _that_..."   
  
  
_ "You might wanna let me take over now."   
  
_ "Huh?" Jamie asked, climbing down along the enormous back landing leg of the Fatalistic Renegade, still hidden from view of countless guards who might or might not have been covering the area around it.   
  
"Makes sense," Leyla conceded from above him, halting just a few moves from where she would`ve likely been facing him eye to eye. The landing legs of the Renegade were enormous after all, easily the size of most large Zoids, as was the case for almost _any_ Whale King approaching the size of a Type Seven. They were both clinging onto a combination of exposed hydraulic parts and power cables, an act that most people would`ve considered nuts.   
  
Then again, most people didn`t spend their days trying to escape a paramilitary terrorist organization that had virtually toppled modern civilization as everyone knew it. There were mitigating circumstances, after all.   
  
"How so?" Jamie snorted up at Leyla, giving her the most deadpan look he could afford. Part of it _was_ plain fear of the Wild Eagle, the other part was... Well...   
  
The Wild Eagle was Jamie`s equal opposite. Everything that Jamie was, the Wild Eagle wasn`t, and everything that the Wild Eagle was, Jamie wasn`t, with only the exception of piloting to seperate them in that respect. Where Jamie was relatively non-violent and outright wimpish, the Wild Eagle had few - if any - known equals in a fist fight, and he was also a crack shot with just about any gun.   
  
Where Jamie was fairly respectful about other people`s relationships though, the Wild Eagle also happened to be a letch. A pervert. An unfaithful jackass, so to speak. Furthermore, with everything happening as it was, he wasn`t quite sure if Leyla was still just _Leyla_ now. She could`ve absorbed a good deal of Connie`s personality as well, after all and-   
  
"Will you stop thinking on it and just _do it_?" Leyla asked in a very _un_-Leyla-like manner, which only served to further the brooding bit of insecurity beneath Jamie`s otherwise ordinarily confused demeanor.   
  
"Fine," he conceded, resisting the urge to say 'I`ll be watching you both.'   
  
A moment was all it took. It was like flipping a coin, on one side you would see Jamie, but barely an instant later, you would see the Wild Eagle, his hair literally shifting into it`s usual pattern, his expression seemingly becoming permanently cockier and his former deathgrip on the parts of the landing gear he was holding onto becoming markedly slack in comparison.   
  
The smirk on his face was a mixture. Boyishly handsome with a James Bond-like charm to it, with an underlying layer of a well skilled assassin lurking beneath the surface, and as his eyes finished the blink that had taken place during it, Leyla could almost swear she saw something else change.   
  
'Will' wasn`t looking at her. He was looking straight _through_ her.   
  
"Let`s get the party started, _little lady_," he stated with a grin, promptly letting go of the landing gear and backflipping towards the ground recklessly.   
  
_ "Agh! What the hell are you doing?!"_ Jamie demanded irately from the mental prison he sat in everytime that Will get control.   
  
"Making a distraction for her, what else?"   
  
At that, the Wild Eagle landed in a crouch atop the foot of the landing leg, hidden on one side, exposed everywhere else. The guards were blissfully unaware of his presence though, they hadn`t even noticed him touch down, all had their backs to the Whale King, expecting an external threat.   
  
"Idiots," Will mumbled out with that same grin as before, charging forward towards the nearest guard with the intent to make them _all_ regret it.   
  
Leyla on the other hand, was left to awkwardly continue her climb to the bottom, half-shocked, half-expectant and entirely unamused by her current partner`s efforts, but still possessing the ability to appreciate them despite herself. By the time she got to a distance where she felt she was safe to jump though, gunfire had already started ringing out, and people were dropping like flies.   
  
_ "Days like this make me wish I was a normal teenybopper,"_ she thought sardonically, landing on both feet and making a break for the nearest cover.   
  
And it was at that moment, that Leyla Tsun heard an almost screeching cry ripple from the gut of one of the dozen or so Whale Kings parked out in plain sight within the hangar.   
  
  
"You could at least have the decency to be more detailed," Brad muttered out, only barely loud enough to hear. He had given up on counting away the seconds some time ago, how long, he wasn`t quite sure. Bill only responded with a mix between a cracked smirk and a distorted, maniacal grin.   
  
"I`m getting out," the black haired youth finally replied, his expression fading back to seriousness as he stood up, languidly cracking his neck to either side. There was silence now. It hung heavily over the former bandit`s thoughts, but didn`t prevent him from springing up to his own feet almost instinctively as the cell began to shake and tremble.   
  
"The bomb on my neck is probably gonna kill me but..."   
  
A pause, even as the rumbling began to become more intense, matching the wavering glow in his eyes, shake for pulse, moment for moment. It was like the entire room was moving in tune with his heart beat, and in a way, it terrified the former mercenary quite a bit, but not enough that he lost his cool, instead narrowing his eyes and looking for something he could use as a weapon if he had to.   
  
"What the hell do I care?"   
  
Another pause. Silence. And then that serious look snapped back into a half-demented, overly determined smirk, driving a chill up Hunter`s spine and leaving him to tense up all over again.   
  
"You might wanna move over to this side of the cell, if you don`t want to die."   
  
"Why?"   
  
"Suit yourself," Bill shrugged with little care, even as the floor behind his cellmate suddenly starting bending, leaving Brad to instinctively lunge across the small room and come close to braining himself on the wall behind his unwilling companion, who merely stood there with what looked like an unbreakable expectation. The floor began to bulge up around a point, until finally it snapped open, leaving a serated blade to stab all the way through to the ceiling and keep going for several seconds, promptly drawing back an instant after gouging a man-sized hole in the ceiling.   
  
At that, the glow intensified, Bill slowly walked forward and the blade began to withdraw, pulling completely out by the time he had finished clearing through the small room, even as the sound of blaring alarms filtered in through both holes.   
  
"I`ll be leaving now. Bye."   
  
And with that, Bill Chapman jumped straight into the air and kicked his way down through the initial opening, vanishing out of Brad`s sight in an instant and leaving the former mercenary to sit there in the corner with his jaw hanging as if it was almost unhinged for several seconds until -   
  
"Crazy son of a bitch actually did it!"   
  
- he straightened up off the floor and jumped down through the hole as well, falling down into what looked like an officer`s room, which bore a third hole running through _it`s_ floor which in turn connected it to the main hangar of the Emerald Nightmare, which in turn happened to be in the possession of one dark Blue Geno Breaker, it`s cockpit hatch sliding open and a single figure climbing from one of it`s forearms and inside a split second later.   
  
In his life, Brad Hunter had seen some weird things, and some crazy, impossible things.   
  
This just about topped every single last one of them.   
  
  
Kick, arm-block into a grapple, lift and pull.   
  
It was a simple technique to break a man`s arm, especially one who was caught completely off guard, and it also left him to drop his gun, which only furthered the success of the Wild Eagle`s third take down in twice as many seconds. Gunshots rang out, disoriented Rommel soldiers dropped like flies and the young man in the pilot suit straightened up, wielding a sub-machine gun in each hand and recklessly spraying bullets off at targets which were already trying to escape - though not necessarily from him.   
  
"Who cracked that Free Willy joke, eh?! _**EH?!**_" Will demanded irately, though that joke had never even been said. He just felt like being dramatic, not like these guys were even providing a challenge for him to begin with.   
  
Whipping around with the speed of a throwing knife, the Wild Eagle was as precise as a sniper, blowing chunks out of people`s bodies with all of the care of an annoyed butcher dealing with a particularly tough chunk of beef, sending three more people to their graves before jumping to the side, landing in a roll on his shoulders and swinging back up to his feet like nothing, spreading his guns out to either side and tagging two more people in the process. Both dropped without screaming, and Leyla zipped by like a cat in the melee.   
  
It was then that twin pairs of blades stabbed through the gut of the nearest Whale King, spaced precious yards from one another before spreading outward, the top two moving straight up, the bottom pair moving straight down, their dulled sides literally crushing metal out of the way rather than slicing through it. The action stopped in that split second, Leyla skidded to a halt, the Wild Eagle lowered his guns briefly and the soldiers who`d been _trying_ in vain to mount a response halted everything they were doing and looked on in terrified awe, even as the Fatalistic Renegade began to take off from the launch pad, suspiciously prepped from the start.   
  
_ "Shit!"_ Jamie yelled out upon coming to a snap realization, which in turn brought Will to look over his shoulder at the gracelessly ascending Whale King, even as it plowed straight through the launch bay door with a creaking howl of metal, a green bolt flinging between it and the Emerald Nightmare in a blinding flash of movement.   
  
"What the hell is going on, Brainiac?" Will demanded hotly, shifting back towards the other Whale King, which now bore an immense, gaping pair of holes in it`s side, not quite big enough to fit a Zoid through, but close enough that the integrity of the hull plating between them had been grossly compromised.   
  
_ "He fucking knew this would happen!"_ Jamie stated in a half-shock, just as all Hell tore out of the stomach of the Whale King, landing with a skid as a metallic plate that probably weighed as many tons as most small Zoids crashed down on top of over a dozen of the soldiers and a number of supply crates near them, setting off several massive chain reactions of missiles going off and igniting other explosives, which in turn spread into a fireball that blew across the entire hangar.   
  
The only reason that Leyla and the Wild Eagle survived was because they were both small enough to dive down onto their stomaches and have the flames pass _right over them_, missing by so few inches that Leyla could feel the edges of individual hairs on her head starting to singe by the end of it.   
  
When the flames died down, Will was the first to open his eyes and look up, making a critical check in Leyla`s direction as she got onto her hands and knees, patting down her head and upper back to make sure that she wasn`t on _fire_ from the blast.   
  
"You alright?!" He shouted out, getting up to one knee in a crouch, guns already spreading back out, forward with one, to the side with the other.   
  
"I`ll be fine!" Leyla shouted back, already up on her feet and glaring at the newly arrived Geno Breaker, which stood with impunity through the flames, heat that was intense enough to singe the green Whale King behind it to a near black, practically killing at _least_ thirty people where they`d been standing in the process. With a stir though, the Zoid halted it`s rampage, growling and stomping away from it`s first victim, it`s now blue optics seeming to re-focus.   
  
They found a specific target all over again.   
  
That target was a blue haired young woman standing no more than eighty feet away, a blue haired girl who didn`t back down and didn`t even have the decency to tremble, whereas her apparent companion was in too much shock to do more than stand up and lower his pirated arsenal in something of a stupor. Recognition showed in those optical units, echoed through a loudspeaker a second later.   
  
"You`re the one," Leyla said in unison with the pilot of the Geno Breaker, feeling a bit of possessive ire fall over her in the process.   
  
"You-" "- took-" "- _my_ Organoid!" Leyla cut him off, dominating through the conversation with a presence that neither Jamie or Will had ever seen from her before.   
  
"_Your_ Organoid?" The pilot, who Jamie now recognized as Bill Chapman, demanded. "He was _my best fucking friend_, you snot nosed little bitch!"   
  
"He was _my_ Bondmate, you psycho!" She shot back, seemingly oblivious to the fact that someone with a charged particle cannon and an itchy trigger finger was upset with her. For a short instant, there was silence, a girl who formerly had multiple personalities standing up to a guy in a Geno Breaker who had been so dedicated to getting _free_ that he had probably altered his own brain chemistry to do it.   
  
And caught in between this mess was a simple, fifteen year old boy who just loved his Raynos, his girlfriend and making up new battle strategies. Who happened to have a secondary personality that was currently in control.   
  
These were _not_ normal people, huh?   
  
"Fuck you," Bill muttered, the crab-like claws of the Blue Geno suddenly springing open again, as if it was going to use them to kill a single, human sized target, even as a burning glow formed in the ceiling.   
  
It all happened in a single split second.   
  
The ceiling ripped open around an incoming bolt of energy, Bill pulled the trigger, Leyla grit her teeth and Will and Jamie _both_ screamed as a bullet the size of a large dog blew over their combined head, whirling through the air with a sonic boom.   
  
And then the second ended.   
  
The bullet crashed into a stack of oil drums, Jamie went numb and the Wild Eagle became indescribably _angry_, while Bill blinked and Leyla rematerialized precious feet out of the way of the attack that would`ve blown out her entire upper body, conveniently overshadowed by an eerily familiar, blue and red Organoid that had it`s own disturbed glint in eyes that weren`t even the same color.   
  
**_ Well fuck muh toes `n call me Bobby-Sue Carloff the Fifth, wasn`t THAT a nick o` time ass-saving?!   
  
_** "What the hell?" Will muttered, his anger changing to near-muted shock, while Jamie`s numbness faded to something that equated to the feeling one got before fainting. There was the telepathic sound of a thud, and Jamie Hameros stopped consciously thinking.   
  
"**_BOREALIS?!_**" Bill almost yelped in shock, automatically shifting his aim, even while Leyla whipped around and found her hands clasped tightly to the clawed grapplers of the Organoid, which stood two or three heads taller with an innocently insane look on it`s face. Oddly enough, she wasn`t cut in the process.   
  
**_ Shall we dance?   
  
_** Chapman pulled the trigger, Borealis lurched forward, bending Leyla over backwards in a near tango-styled dance move, while the bullet cracked through the air above them and slammed into the side of another parked Whale King with little effect. At that, Borealis straightened up and performed another near-waltzing dodge, each of them bending over sideways and kicking a leg out as another round streaked overhead, plowing into the same Whale King as before.   
  
For several seconds this continued before finally, an annoyed sounding scream echoed over the loudspeaker, leaving the Wild Eagle as the only one to try and respond in force, raising his guns up and taking aim towards the inside of the barrel of the charged particle cannon. It was a long shot, but the Geno Breaker had it`s mouth open and if Bill was going to keep firing, it was all he could do.   
  
"_Why_?!"   
  
**_ ... Yanno, if I were a woman, this`d be like a romantic dilemma.   
  
_** "Why the _fuck_ did you _leave me_ to **_DIE_** alone?!" Bill demanded irately.   
  
**_ But since I THINK I`m a male, someone`s prob`ly just gonna run over me, huh?   
  
_** "What the hell is going on here?!" Leyla cut into things, obviously more than a _bit_ annoyed that _her_ Organoid was being friendly with someone that was trying to _kill_ both of them.   
  
**_ Ohhhhhhhh, nothin`. Billy`s just a biiiiiiiiiit jealous still.   
  
_** "Jealous? _Jealous_?"   
  
**_ Oookay, so mebbethatwadn`ttherightthingtasaybutstill... Can`t we all just... Get along?   
  
_** "Let go of her!" Will cut back into the conversation, shifting one gun to aim right at Borealis` red eye with an annoyed glint. "Unlike that idiot, _I_ won`t miss what I`m aiming for."   
  
"Put down the gun, Will," Leyla ordered sternly, yanking free of the Organoid`s grasp and clasping her hands to her hips. At that, Will only kept his aim firm, trying to split his attention between the Breaker and the inhuman _lunatic_ standing behind his other personality`s girlfriend.   
  
"Now then: Can we _please **fucking** talk_ this out, like _civilized human beings_?!"   
  
Leyla took on a deadpan expression, Borealis almost mirrored it as best he could and Bill only quirked a brow up.   
  
It was then that Will realized he was dealing with an Organoid, an Ancient Zoidian and a homicidal madman. He was actually the only civilized human being currently left standing.   
  
"... _O_kay, so maybe that wasn`t the best way to put it, but still," he corrected himself with a sardonic expression on his face.   
  
**_ Well, ya see, I`d LOOOOOOVE getting to talk this out with these two shits here, but I got a conversation I need to have with ol` Blueberry, and there`s a murderous psycho coming about... Five? Six minutes behind me? Ya miiiiiight wanna LEAVE RIGHT ABOUT NOW! Tha`s what I`m doin`!   
  
_** And with that, Borealis` chest split open, revealing hollow insides as metallic cables sprung out, wrapping around the girl in front of him, who seemed to shift from a paradigm of defiance to the same frightened teen she`d been through most of the day, shouting out -   
  
"**_JAMIE!!!_**"   
  
- and promptly being yanked off her feet and into the Organoid`s newly bloated-looking body, which in turn took on an ethereal glow before vanishing into a multi-colored bolt of energy and taking off through the hole that the Fatalistic Renegade had punched out earlier, leaving only the Wild Eagle to stand behind and deal with the irate Bill Chapman and his Blue Geno Breaker, and leaving only the Wild Eagle to voice both his, and _Jamie`s_ feelings with a single word, mainly since the other was still unconscious.   
  
"**_LEYLA!!!_**"   
  
For a split second, nothing happened.   
  
And then, Bill Chapman screamed, the Geno Breaker`s thrusters blazing to life on both top and bottom as the huge Zoid tore from the metallic floor of the hangar, crashing into a wall and then punching straight through it with no trouble at all, promptly vanishing from sight as a result, just as a familiar Zoid plodded out of the initial hole in the Emerald Nightmare`s side.   
  
"Jamie!" Echoed over another loudspeaker, causing Will to turn back to a newly emerged Scout Fox, but before he could ever even _hope_ to stop and tell Brad that he was the Wild Eagle at the moment, something horrible happened.   
  
The ceiling shattered in a cacophony of screaming metal and terrified, dying men and women, Hell`s Bells ringing loudly as a sadistic laugh echoed through the ears, hearts, minds and souls of everyone who hadn`t been shocked out of their senses, followed by the words that both Brad Hunter and William Edgars/Jamie Hameros would forever regret hearing spoken by the newest party crasher.   
  
"**_TIME TO DIE, BOYS AND GIRLS!!!_**"   
  
Kale Obscura had arrived.   
  


_ End Chapter Eighteen_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** So much for stopping and reflecting... Maaaaaybe I didn`t name this chapter right O_o;; *Nods. Hrms.* What`d everyone think? >_>?  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Like I said: Nooooobody believed me when I said Mark was outta luck. And to think, that`s only a minimal inkling of what I`ve got lined up for that sorry son of a bitch...  
  
**The Big Fisch:** I`ll give ya a hint: It **wasn`t** a Dibison. Thomas lost that back in Bitterfrost(thus far, **ALL** of my Zoids fics(POVs included) have run in the same storyline/AU/what-the-hell-ever you wanna call it). Suffice to say, our dear blondie`s work is going to have drastic consequences for the NC/0 cast...  
  
**Illidan:** No, they`re still quite alive for now O_o; *SMACK* Snap out of it man! >_>;;   
  
And that`s all for now. Guess I couldn`t keep that five pound weight off the AHBL button, could I?  
  
Enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	19. By Demons Be Driven

  
  
**Foreword:** Chapter soundtrack is as follows:  
  
Zoids - Raven`s Theme  
The Two Towers - Helm`s Deep  
Metallica - One  
Puddle of Mudd - She Hates Me/Blurry  
  
Couldn`t really find a song to fit the last scene, but listen to each song for each of the first four scenes. Pick your own for the last.  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
By Demons Be Driven   
  
  
  
Fifteen seconds ago, the Wild Eagle had _thought_ that things couldn`t _possibly_ get any worse than they already had been. Leyla had effectively been kidnapped, Jamie was unconscious, a berserk Blue Geno Breaker was going nuts and an entire, heavily armed and armored paramilitary installation had been alerted to the severity of the situation that it was facing, meaning an armed, likely _massive_ response wasn`t going to be long in coming.   
  
Fifteen seconds ago, the Wild Eagle had thought things couldn`t get any worse.   
  
Fourteen seconds ago, he had been proven wrong.   
  
_ Dead_. _Wrong_.   
  
"Is this the only reception I get? I came all the way out here for the specific purpose of slaughtering someone and all I get is a lousy Scout Fox?" Echoed out from a newly formed black cloud at the center of the space between the two closest Whale Kings, the explosion it had formed from having thrown the currently-Zoidless Wild Eagle through the air. He had only landed on his feet with no broken bones by the graces of whatever god was watching over him, skidding along and smacking facefirst right into a newly entering soldier.   
  
Will got the good end of that deal, standing up and promptly pulling the triggers of his two guns, only to find out too late that he was now out of ammo. A split second`s compromise and he would`ve remedied that problem with ease, but he wouldn`t get the chance.   
  
"Ah well, it`ll do."   
  
Pulse cannon shots rang out, the Scout Fox lunged out of the way and barely avoided getting vaped into oblivion like the side of the Whale King it had come out of, the huge carrier`s guts now clearly exposed and ablaze. The group of soldiers accompanying the one that Will had crashed into promptly scattered in fear, leaving their comrade and their former prisoner behind in the process of trying to make a vain attempt at escaping.   
  
"Jamie, get outta here!" Brad yelled out over his own loudspeaker, unknowing of the change that had occured. Despite the naming issue, Will followed orders without hesitation, running towards the nearest exit as quickly as his legs could carry him and ignoring the sounds of a _very_ one-sided battle going on in the background.   
  
_ "This isn`t the Geno Saurer,"_ Brad thought in the meantime, nimbly guiding his newly acquired Zoid through a string of almost _intentionally_ poorly aimed gunfire, exploding the normally smooth, metallic terrain all around it into a mutilated no-man`s land, quickly cutting down the options that the small Zoid had for places to run to.   
  
All too late though, Brad realized he was being roped into a trap, and by the time he fully figured it out, the smoke had blown open to reveal a monstrous black demon from Hell, diving at him with jaws wide open, laser-sharp teeth ready to clamp shut on his stolen Zoid`s throat in a death grip.   
  
***CLAMP***   
  
"**_WHAT THE FUCK?!_**" The former mercenary finally let out, his Scout Fox being yanked from the ground by it`s neck, flailing all the while. The attacker was even faster than he`d expected, comparable to a Lightning Saix even without activating any visible thrusters, and it`s vicelike grip rivaled that of the Elephander with no trouble whatsoever. For the first time since the battle at the Blitz Team base, Brad was coming to the realization that the best thing he could hope for was either survival or a painless death.   
  
"Still as predictable as you were the last time I trashed you," Kale mocked, the head of the Geno Maxis suddenly shaking around, and by default, flinging the Scout Fox around with it like some cloth-made rag doll, leaving Brad to yell out in desperation and curse himself for not having put his safety harness on. It was a terrifying ride, he was only able to prevent himself from being smashed into the ceiling of the cockpit by sheer force of will alone - that and his vice like clinging to the control console.   
  
"What the hell do you want from me?!" Brad managed to half-yell out, promptly losing his grip on the controls and flinging up into the ceiling, headfirst. If it had been like his last confrontation with Kale Obscura, he would`ve been knocked out, but this time, even with a new concussion, adrenaline kept him going, blood now staining the cockpit`s monitor.   
  
Finally, the shaking stopped. The former mercenary dropped like a stone back into the seat, biting back tears against what felt almost like a cracked skull while Kale, who had been so effortless thus far, merely chuckled.   
  
"I just want you to die. Is it that hard to understand?"   
  
"_Why_? Don`t you have issues with Vega or some shit?!" Brad growled out, louder than he`d wanted but not really able to do much else, instinctively using one hand to pat over his head and make sure his skull was still intact and the other to _yank_ the safety harness down and strap it in so tightly that he could barely even lean forward enough to reach the controls.   
  
"Vega? Hah. _Fuck_ Vega. My issues`re with your team mate, and ya see, if _you_ die, _he_ ends up feeling emotional pain for it - cuz you _are_ one of his pals, and any goody-fucking-two-shoes like _that_ is gonna be in near-_agony_ that _anyone_ used his friends to nail _him_. Get it?" Kale asked, a bit cockier and a bit less articulate than usual. It was obvious that he was too busy enjoying himself to really put any major spin onto things.   
  
"You`re... You`re nuts..."   
  
"... Gee, it took you _this_ long to figure that little detail out? Shit, you really _are_ stupid."   
  
Brad felt the cockpit start moving again, higher up than it had been before, and for a few seconds, he held his breath, putting both hands onto the harness and preparing for whatever Kale had in store for him.   
  
It wasn`t pretty.   
  
A split second passed by in an eternity before the Scout Fox was practically judo-mouth-tossed into the steel flooring of the hangar, it`s legs crumpling and shattering like _nothing_ as stabilizers blew out, sending caps flying through the semi-smoky air like oversized bullets, leaving visible craters in the sides of the two Whale Kings to either side of the ruthless execution that Kale Obscura was carrying out on Brad Hunter.   
  
Jarred half-senseless, Brad squeezed his eyes half-shut as the brutalized Scout Fox was dragged from the floor again, tearing several plates up before all of the legs outright snapped off beneath the knee and elbow joints, power quickly beginning to fade and static starting to cover the viewscreen. Sparks were flying out of numerous openings across the small Zoid`s stomach, and one of the shoulders had come loose enough that it was hanging on by only half of the motor unit it was moved with, cables having pinched and snapped all over it. Smoke was starting to pour out of the Zoid`s back, as well, leaving one to wonder just how much more abuse it could take before exploding.   
  
"... Nnnngsh..." Brad groaned out, almost totally deprived of his senses at this point. Where Bit Cloud had been able to keep fighting - or at least _try_ to while trying to escape - Brad Hunter could not. For one thing, Bit had a great deal more natural talent and luck, as well as an Organoid and a better Zoid to compliment them both, and for another, Kale Obscura wasn`t toying with him. He just wanted the ex-mercenary _dead_.   
  
"Still alive? Wow, I guess you`re about as tough as you are stupid, huh?" Kale asked, taking an utterly perverse joy in smashing his defenseless prey in with absolute impunity. Brad groaned out again in response, trying to form a coherent sentence that would`ve been packed with every single forbidden word in the common language, only to find that he could barely sputter out a muted curse beneath his breath.   
  
A curse that was the precursor to the Scout Fox being through through the air with so little effort that it was laughable, practically floating for a few seconds before smashing sideways into the already abused Whale King it had walked out of in the first place.   
  
There was a crumpling of metal, the unhinged shoulder flew free and crashed somewhere else in the immense space of hangar that the slaughter was taking place in, and after that, the Scout Fox smacked down onto the floor, on it`s stomach, facing the very Zoid now poised to annihilate it.   
  
There was a swish of air, the Maxis` crestblade flipped forward, shimmering murderously as the Geno took a step forward and crouched, taking a sadistic amount of time to line things up just right to plunge the blade straight through the very center of the cockpit.   
  
Survival instincts kicked in, with the screen rapidly starting to black out across multiple grids, Brad pulled the harness open and ducked out of it, pushing it back down and then inching to the side as much as he possibly could, the last grad of the monitor blacking out with an image of the Geno Maxis charging forward.   
  
_ "Work, damnit..."   
  
_ ***SHANK***   
  
Glass slagged before it could finish shattering, the inches-thick, two foot tall blade of the Geno Maxis stabbed straight through and kept on going for what must`ve been ten, eleven, maybe even twelve feet, gutting straight through the material of the harness and the seat behind it, missing Brad by such a short distance that his trademark blue longvest was just about skinned at the chest, the very tip of the zipper flash-melting off in an instant. Any closer and it would`ve run him through, going in one side and ripping out of the other.   
  
More than any time in his life, Brad Hunter felt he had just lucked out.   
  
And then he realized that he wasn`t through yet. Kale had shown that he was destructive before, he had become even more so since then, which lead Brad to the conclusion that the base itself - and with it, his brutalized, stolen Scout Fox, would soon be going bye-bye.   
  
The blade seemed to hang in place for precious seconds, as if Kale was taking his time, visualizing the life draining out of his apparent victim, and then it drew away, slipping back out so perfectly that the cut through the glass, and the seat and harness, was left unscathed, not widened or heightened in any way. Hunter let out a gasp of relief, only now noticing that he had been holding his breath over the course of the past thirty seconds, though his gasp was completely overshadowed by the murderous growl of the Zoid that had been trying to obliterate him.   
  
Gunshots rang out, Brad couldn`t see a thing, and quite honestly - he didn`t want to. The sounds of metal crunching like tin foil, ripping apart as if it were paper caught in the malicious path of a broadsword and blowing apart like a cardboard box trying to withstand a firecracker weren`t long in coming, which meant that those on base must have started _trying_ to mount some sort of counter-offensive, however hopeless it was.   
  
Loud, unhidden steps echoed, moving slowly away from the downed Scout Fox, as if Kale was taking his time, enjoying the utter immunity he probably had to the firepower of the disoriented patchwork defense force, and after a few short moments, Brad made his move, roughly kicking at the thin gap in the glass and breaking it before jumping out into plain sight.   
  
The black Geno evolution was standing not too far away, it`s back turned, arms literally stretched out across a distance they weren`t initially capable of. The claws of one had been sunken into the head of an Iron Kong, the other was extended straight through it`s chest and out the back like a hot knife through butter.   
  
All Brad knew was that he wasn`t going to stay and watch - he had to _leave_. _Now_.   
  
_ "Good luck Jamie, I don`t think I`m gonna be able to hunt your scrawny ass down again,"_ he thought to himself, turning and promptly breaking into a sprint towards the same hole that had been punched into the side of the Whale King hangar by the escaping Fatalistic Renegade, all of five minutes earlier. Maybe it was the dizziness caused by a newly reformed concussion, maybe it was fear and maybe it was just a classic case of the rock and the hard place, but when he got to the very edge of that forced exit, nothing stopped him.   
  
Not even a ninety foot drop into the rushing currents of the river that the base had been built to overlook.   
  
Without so much as an ounce of hesitation or even a last word, Brad jumped over an upturned piece of metal and went flying, curling his legs up to his chest and holding his nose all the way down before making splashdown on the water`s surface and vanishing beneath the waves.   
  
  
A sharp right turn, guarded on all sides, alertness pre-empted an attack that wasn`t ever even going to come and a kick lashed out as a nimble, seemingly well-honed body went flying backwards through the air on it`s sideways, the soft point of the knee constricting around a man`s throat, the trap slipping shut like the crushing utensils used to open up a crab or lobster shell in a resturaunt. Instantly, reflexes that would`ve taken a martial arts master a lifetime to hone were put to use - along with a seemingly inhuman show of control and agility, with the attacker swinging, the muscle on his lower leg catching the victim`s chin and the other leg coming into play in a downward kick to the nearest shoulder.   
  
*Cerck-**POP!***   
  
The first leg uncoiled, springing away from the newly deceased man as a young fellow all but hovered in the air for a tenth of a second, legs straightening up beneath him, knees bending with the touchdown and a hand anchoring to the floor supportively as the landing turned into a crouch.   
  
His head hanging down lopsided, neck completely broken, the Rommel guard`s hands dropped to his side. His lips sagged open and let out a dying breath, and then his knees gave way. With a muffled thump onto the smoothly shined metal floor, he ceased to stand, lying on his side, completely dead.   
  
And a few moments later, he was also looted of his sidearm and the two clips of ammunition he`d been keeping for it.   
  
With no remorse whatsoever, Will stood up straight and shook out his right leg - the one he had used to break this nameless lackey`s neck like a twig - and leered over his shoulder to make sure that he hadn`t been seen by anyone else. To his own personal luck and relief, it appeared that he had been given the fortune of finding the only bastard _stupid enough_ to hold his post, even as the base rattled, the tremor originating from the colossal hangar that the Wild Eagle had escaped from in the first place.   
  
A pause, he stuffed the two clips into his jumpsuit`s front shirt pocket - a feature that had originally been Jamie`s idea. The other personality hadn`t ever really thought of a _use_ for that pocket, or the ones in the pants, he`d always had his lightly armored vest after all. Right now, Will was thanking any local gods and goddesses that Jamie had useless ideas sometimes, if only because this one turned out to not be useless after all.   
  
And speaking of Jamie...   
  
"Feel free to fuckin` wake up _anytime now_," Will bit out in a hushed whisper through grit teeth. Another tremor hit - he could vaguely register the sound of an explosion, even through what was roughly more than a hundred feet of double - sometimes triple or quadruple reinforced steel, which was probably becoming increasingly mutilated and faulty as the brutality continued.   
  
Almost as an afterthought, Will slapped the button on the corner that had a 'Blast Door' label stamped beneath it, watching the ceiling around the concealed door promptly slip open, with the three inch thick slab of ten-by-seven metal dropping into place under the force of gravity alone. After that, he turned around and promptly took off down the hallway, darting past numerous open-and-shut doorways and encountering no resistance along the way, until finally he came to a pair of elevator doors. The first was still shut, but the second was slipping open as he arrived.   
  
For a split second, he hesitated to continue forward, fearing that he might have had to turn back.   
  
Then the doors finished opening and roughly a half a dozen mechanics could be seen, each of them looking terrified beyond words. Instinct and reflexes guided his hand, before he even finished looking at them, the gun in his hand was thrown up and aim had been taken, but by the time he could start pulling the trigger, the elevator promptly dropped out of sight, leaving the men and women inside to go screaming to their deaths a few dozen feet below after crashing into a sub-level of some kind.   
  
Another pause. He blinked.   
  
"... Well, fuck ya`ll too," he complained annoyedly, then whipped around in time to hear the blast bay door he had left behind all of a minute and a half earlier creaking and groaning. It wouldn`t hold much longer, and with only one escape left open to him...   
  
Normal people would`ve given up. Will just tucked the gun into his hip pocket and stepped cautiously onto the edge of the elevator, the doors having frozen in place as power started going out. With little fear but a good bit of hesitation remaining, he reached blindly into the darkness on the left side of the door way, fumbling into nothing before checking on the right.   
  
Success came in the form of cold, iron bars.   
  
_ "Maintenance ladder,"_ he thought needlessly, getting a tight grip and then swinging around the edge of the door with one hand, the other shooting blindly onto one of the bars, his feet already landing in a climbing position as his shared-brain calculated the distance between each of them, already beginning to climb up as if on auto-pilot by the time a fiery metallic shriek echoed from the hallway, which was already beneath him.   
  
Self-preservation urged him on, a feral orange glow briefly shimmering through the opened elevator door before crimson flames belched into sight beneath him, automatically raising the shaft`s temperature by at least twenty degrees. Still, he kept going, moving higher and higher, to where the flames couldn`t reach him, even though they had died down by now. The men and women he`d seen earlier had been mechanics, he had no doubt of that because they had all been wearing mechanic jumpsuits, it was like it was stamped on their freaking chests.   
  
That meant that one of the floors had to lead to a secondary hangar, which was likely to be on the top floor, which in turn was probably located at the top of the shaft.   
  
He didn`t know how far he was from the top, but time really does tend to fly when you`re on the run from a genocidal madman, and what was probably ten or twenty minutes of breakneck climbing felt like only two or three seconds to him by the time he finally came to a closed doorway at the top, finding his hopes for escape dashed instantly.   
  
_ "Fuck."   
  
"Try shooting some grip holes into the nearest door..."   
  
_ "Good to see you`re finally awake, Brainiac," Will commented, holding on for dear life with one hand and grabbing his gun with the other. Seconds went by, filled with muted gunfire that couldn`t hope to overtake the sound of creaking, yielding building supports below, but after emptying his first clip, sending it falling out of his gun to the bottom sub-levels however many hundreds of feet below and then cramming a new one in with _one hand_, neither Jamie, or the currently dominant Wild Eagle could really focus on any sound right now.   
  
It had taken two shots for each shallow grip, but without any power to keep the doors shut, those two shots for each were all it had taken, leaving Will to forcibly pull the first half of the door out of the way enough to squeeze through, automatically raising his gun again and finding himself in an empty hangar.   
  
An empty, _aerial Zoid hangar_.   
  
One cracked grin later, Will lowered his gun back into his pockets and cracked his knuckles with a Lupinesque snicker.   
  
"Eeny, meeny, miny, mo..."   
  
_ "Just pick one!"   
  
_ "My annoyingotherhalftoldme to pick _that_ one," he stated proudly, singling out an eerily familiar, grass-green Zoid that just _happened_ to be situated in plain sight, the only Wild Eagle-worthy thing currently left in a hangar which had formerly been crammed with twenty Redler Interceptors, a two dozen Foxbats and twelve high agility Sinkers - the 'home guard' for the base, as far as the aerial front went. Not that he particularly cared either way, then again, neither of them did for that matter, but still.   
  
"Talk about fuckin` convenient, eh?"   
  
_ "Check for bombs. Don`t forget what happened to Brad`s first Scout Fox, **or** that the commander of that escaped Whale King had to **know** what was going on..."   
  
_ "Could`ve been a coincidence," Will shrugged, jogging across the near-empty hangar and swiping a thick, weighty vest from the floor as he did so. Obviously, everyone who had escaped hadn`t been paying attention to small things while in their rush, someone must`ve taken it off and forgotten it...   
  
_ "Will."   
  
_ "What?"   
  
_ "First a Geno Breaker busts loose. Then the pilot turns out to know Leyla. Leyla knows him. Then an Organoid busts into the party and kidnaps her. Then the pilot goes nuts and leaves, right after a Whale King breaks out through the hangar door. Then a murderous psycho just **happens** to plow through the roof as Brad comes out in a new Zoid. Then we find a convenient flak jacket and our Raynos waiting for us."   
  
_ Dumbfounded silence.   
  
_ "Don`t ya think that`s a liiiiiittle bit **too** coincidental?"   
  
_ "... Good point, but I`m not paranoid enough to look a gift horse in the mouth," Will replied, checking around the Zoid briefly in order to make sure it didn`t have any freshly altered things, like new welding, improperly colored bolts, diggering starter caps, things of that nature, then climbing up into the cockpit after taking a look under the seat.   
  
_ "You`re freaking nuts."   
  
_ "... This coming from someone who holds conversations with his other personality," the Wild Eagle replied, strapping himself in as another tremor rattled the entire base, making it sound more and more like the upright-barbel structure`s thinner midsection would be giving way soon. Either way, they weren`t waiting to find out.   
  
The primary thruster ignited, the Zoid squawked a bit annoyedly and promptly took off into an unsteady run towards the exit, jumping clumsily over the edge before bursting off from zero to mach three so quickly that it would`ve killed just about anyone else, blaring through the low skies before making a rapid ascent and heading off over the horizon at top speed, leaving the immense base in the distance to come crumbling down around itself without so much as a single spare survivor.   
  
Kale Obscura was thorough alright, but this time, he wasn`t thorough enough.   
  
  
Sensation, the ability to detect things through the five conventional senses, was something that had always been taken for granted by most people. Sure, there were those who were disabled in some way, but even they could take it for granted sometimes.   
  
He couldn`t. He had forgotten who he was by now, existing solely in the realm of the senses, all six of them. From the feel of the solid rock of the ground crumpling and buckling out of his way over the course of a little over three miles every few minutes to the way that the sound was analyzed by his newfound hearing so many times over that it would`ve driven him insane, were he any less than what he now was. It extended outward from there, too, from sight so powerful that he could see through the solid earth itself, visualizing his target over a hundred miles away, and to his sense of smell, where every single scent of dirt was imagined, taken in and scrutinized before he could even register it.   
  
And there was the sixth sense, the ability to register movements in the planet`s own magnetic field, tracking virtually every surge of energy across the spectrum, even going so far as to feeling the shifts caused by solar winds and clashing particles high in the atmosphere, it was like he had a built-in, secondary road map, tuned specifically to his brain.   
  
He had once lived in a pitch black haze, going from fix to fix, squandering wealth that he had never even bothered to work for and learning how to pilot with the best that he could afford, and then there`d been the day he had lost it all. From there, the haze had been painful, going from fix to fix as before, but with longer intervals, torturously existing in what could best be described as a pitch black hell of withdrawls, with just enough in-betweeners to fill the void and keep him from becoming clean from it all.   
  
And now?   
  
Now, every single slither of his massive body brought him into a paradigm of ecstasy, heightened infrequently by pulses of something in his smaller self`s bloodstream. If he had been able to see himself, he would`ve probably had nightmares for the rest of his life. Cables and wires had been jammed into his body at almost every point, he hardly even looked vaguely human anymore, from the nutrient tubes that pumped new life into him to the waste management system that kept him from soiling himself to the fact that his skull was missing from the forehead up, leaving in place a disturbing looking helmet to cover his brain, tubes that were inches thick extending out to other parts of his merry little chamber of Hell. He wore no clothing, it would`ve been a moot point anyway, and his eyes were covered by what looked like goggles of some sort, a permanently cracked smile hidden by the mask covering his mouth and nose, sending filtered air mixed with mood altering, performance enhancing chemicals engineered into sprays coming in at regular times.   
  
Even his true flesh wasn`t the same, taking on patches of what looked like the covering of a Zoid Core, every beat of his heart making each patch shimmer dimly with life that wasn`t even his own now.   
  
He wasn`t human anymore. He had become something else.   
  
Gunther Prozen would`ve looked upon him with envy, Hiltz would`ve looked upon him with challenging respect, but his own brother looked upon him with nothing but ruthlessness and calculated thought, and the people he knew he would soon be set loose upon...   
  
They would all look upon him in terror.   
  
He wasn`t human anymore. He wasn`t even a true, pure Zoid either.   
  
He was the Hellwalker, and soon, he would let the world know why he had been given that name.   
  
  
It had taken an hour and a half to get all of the refugees from Romeo City off of the Empress Heart, they were all a good deal quicker to _leave_ and enjoy the free, protected, _civilized_ space of Champton than they had been to get onto what had felt like hour after hour of riding around in a flying sardine can, leaving the Whale King`s volunteer crew as the last group of people to disembark.   
  
Not counted among that core grouping was the extended family-like bunch of people that had been the top of the command structure on the ride to relative safety, namely the Tauros family, Naomi Fluegel, Sarah Obscura and Leyon Martin. Sarah hadn`t come since she had gone off to find Steve and Leyon, while the other three were left to make the exit without any major fanfare of any sort, which is exactly what they wanted.   
  
Naomi had been the first to come into view, stepping almost dizzily down the jaw-ramp of the huge ship, and she was followed by a half-asleep looking Leon, who was stretching his arms out as if it were the first time in his life that he had been granted freedom from a packed cell, leaving Leena to bring up the rear, though she was also the only one who wasn`t visibly exhausted.   
  
Ironic considering she had probably done more work than either of her cohorts put together.   
  
Which was even _more_ ironic because of a simple fact. It was Leena Tauros. _Leena_. _Tauros_. It was quite blatant that the world was coming to an end when Leena-freaking-Tauros outworked her older brother _and_ Naomi Fluegel, combined. A sure sign of the apocalypse, no doubt.   
  
But there _was_ at least one fan there, though his attentions weren`t geared towards Leon and Naomi in the slightest.   
  
All things considered, Harry Champ looked like he`d seen better days. Hands tucked sloppily into his jacket pockets, he wasn`t wearing the platform shoes that made him four or five inches taller and his hair was a mess, while Sebastian and Benjamin were both noticably absent, and quite frankly, he looked like the only sun he had seen in the past week and a half had been from a television. Even if his expression lightened dramatically upon sight of the girl at the back of the exiting line, he _still_ looked as though the weight of every single problem on Zi had been dropped on his head and then smacked down with a sledge hammer.   
  
In short, he looked almost as bad as he felt, managing to raise up an arm in a wave over at the departing trio, which in turn caught the eye of the first of the three.   
  
"What the hell happened to him?" Naomi asked bluntly, somewhat taken aback by the young man`s appearance. She`d seen Harry before, two or three times in chance encounters or second hand viewings on a monitor, but now? Eesh...   
  
"The reality that the world isn`t made of gold, I hope," Leon half-mumbled under his breath. He had never had much like for the rich kid, half of it was due to his own dislike of the fact that he`d probably never had to work for _anything_ in his life, the other half was just the big brother part of him being needlessly protective of Leena.   
  
And as for Leena`s thoughts on the visible changes to her not-so-secret-admirer/stalker/walking-0%-interest-loan-office were the least indifferent of the group, however restrained they might have been. For a fruitcake like _Harry_ to look as bad as he did right now, _something_ had to have happened. She was also the only one to even return the poor guy`s wave, breaking rank from the other two and plainly walking across the landing pad towards him, leaving Naomi to stifle a rude joke about lunatics of a feather and Leon to shift a sideways glare in Harry`s general direction.   
  
"Hi," the heir to the Champ Corporation greeted a bit glumly, his voice sounding rubbery for some reason, though the fact that Leena was even present lifted his mood drastically. Now within an arms reach of him though, Leena quirked a brow at the deep bags currently sitting just below his eyes, and the fact that those eyes themselves were bloodshot. Majorly.   
  
"What`s wrong?" She asked without even bothering to return his greeting, placing her hands on her hips and waiting for an answer. It seemed to be a comedic irony to Harry though, he just let out a cracked, overly aware grin and an uncharacteristic giggle, turning and starting to walk away as if he was on the verge of bursting into laughter.   
  
_ Now_, she _knew_ something was wrong, reaching out a hand and vicing her fingers down onto his shoulders, tongue in cheek with an expression that probably would`ve slagged titanium like a heavy duty laser. Harry only paused in mid-step, briefly losing his balance - or thinking it - and straightening up, both hands now hanging limply at his sides in resignation.   
  
"Guess I don`t have a choice, huh?"   
  
"Nope," the girl retorted bluntly, still maintaining her grip so tightly that Harry`s shoulder had probably started bruising beneath his jacket. Either way, his expression remained neutral.   
  
"Could we at least go somewhere private if you`re going to grill my brains out?" He asked only half-heartedly, for once not dumping energy into glorifying the girl who was now holding him in place like an annoyed anchor.   
  
"Lead the way," she answered, releasing her grip for all of a tenth of a second before locking her fingers onto his ear, causing Harry`s face to contort into a mostly unreadable, otherwise annoyed looking expression. "But you`re not getting out of this," she added as an afterthought, a layer of concern underlining her voice. It was roughly equivelent to saying 'I`m going to get the truth out of you, even if means beating you over the head with a brick. Because I`m _worried_ about your wellbeing,' and meaning every word of it.   
  
Either way, Harry got the message, tilting back and to the side a bit while hobbling off, with Leena coming along an arms length behind, still holding his ear with one hand.   
  
Naomi and Leon were both staring mutely at this for a few seconds before finally sharing a sideways glance at each other.   
  
"Which bodypart goes first?" Naomi asked as idly as if speaking about the weather. Leon seemed to take the question into actual consideration, thoughtfully regarding the young man who was dragging his sister off somewhere. Sort of.   
  
"Depends on the circumstance, I suppose."   
  
"Such as?"   
  
"If he does anything like you-know-what with her, Harry`s losing his Champs."   
  
At that, Naomi gave a long, slow nod and Leon narrowed his eyes with that big brother look practically oozing out of every pore on his face.   
  
  
A long time ago, somewhere in the range of one to ten thousand years, an Ancient Zoidian task group had identified Nyx as a number of things. Chief among them was that it`s very name translated into a Zoidian death threat, something roughly along the lines of 'God will strike you down.' Other names fot his place though, were just as menacing, but also more mythical, names like Oloska, a fabled realm covered with more gem wealth than any other place in Zoidian mythology, but the more common secondary nametag for the Dark Continent, at least in Zoidian times, was Baria.   
  
The Land of the Dead.   
  
That name, at this moment at least, fit more than any other that Madison Rose could think of, not that she was even bothering with any of it. Raw indifference personified, she stood with an apathetic glint in her pinkish-red eyes, staring at the former trench of now hardened, brittle magma, still hot to the touch but rapidly beginning to vanish under a thin, all consuming layer of snow and ash. Roc possessed less of an indifference, but more an expectation, cautious and well-hindered, but still there. Neither spoke, neither moved, one of them only barely blinked from time to time and that was the way things went.   
  
The Liger Zero, on the other hand, growled out annoyedly, lashing it`s tail about in the equivelent gesture of tapping one`s foot till it hurt, having somehow been repaired already - if only by the graces of the Organoid it stood next to, rather than the woman standing blithely in front of them both, her club slung up between both arms, braced against the back of her neck. Where most would`ve been hurting over doing such a thing, Madison looked as if it was just business as usual, nothing else.   
  
For how long, none of them knew, but they waited. Indifferent, expecting or flat-out upset, they waited.   
  
And then, after what must have been another hour or two, with little warning, a gloved hand burst out of the ground, balled into a fist so tight that blood could be seen trailing from the glove`s rim.   
  
If Roc had a human face, the First Born would`ve been smiling like an absolute _idiot_ right about now.   
  


_ End Chapter Nineteen_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** "He`s alive! **_ALIVE!!!_**" :P  
  
Not that long a chap this time around, but cut me some slack since I was a bit half-asleep/out-of-it-due-to-being-semi-sick while writing it.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Second guess away! Half the fun is leading the readers around by the nose, then blindsiding them with a sledge hammer and pulling cheap pranks on them while they`re helplessly unconscious @_@ Err... Waitasec >_>; Oh, and thanks for leaving the review, much appreciated since my other two chief reviewers were M.I.A. O_o  
  
**Illidan/EndlessAdventure:** Where`d ya go? Did the last chapter`s title mislead you into thinking I was going soft or something? o_O;  
  
Welp, what`d everyone think? Good, bad? In-between?  
  
That`s all for now folks, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	20. Catching Up

  
  
**Foreword:** Soundtrack is as follows: Scene One: G Gundam - Evolve  
  
Scene Two: Metallica - Unforgiven II or Drowning Pool - Tear Away  
  
Scene Three: Lifehouse - Breathing  
  
Scene Four: Authority Zero - One More Minute  
  
Scene Five: Dragonball Z - Hell`s Bells  
  
Scene Six: Pick your own until the cue. You`ll know when, trust me.  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Catching Up  
  
  
  


Outside of a diner, two people stood by a bit blithely, listening the various sounds of what seemed like utterly _endless_ combat off in the distance, just outside the city. From plain gunfire to shredding alloy to howls of pain to ordinary explosions, it all painted a rather annoying audio background for both of them, especially considering that it was their first time alone with one another in days. The taller of the two, a young man in his early twenties, was obviously the one better suited to dealing with odd hours, though he looked a great deal less stressed out than the shorter one, a young woman who was also in her early twenties, even accounting for the fact that he was, more or less, used to it by now.   
  
Then again, Marcus Harlock hadn`t spent the majority of his time over the past days that they`d spent in Farentown working over the wounded in a hospital, entirely by volunteering to do so. Sure, fighting could take a devestating toll on someone after even a short while, but then again, so could seeing non-stop blood and gore at point blank and hearing people scream from barely being anesthetized while undergoing surgery due to rapidly dwindling medical supplies.   
  
In short, the past days had done a _number_ on Abigail Summers, and quite frankly, it showed. Even through that though, as she sipped on a bottle of water, she didn`t focus on it. With a heart that was probably twice as big as just about anyone else in the circle of people she had grown up calling friends and family, along with the wits to match it, Abbie didn`t ever really spend her time moping over things that had already happened without a good reason. She didn`t live in the past and she hadn`t ever been a very angsty teenager, and she had always been fairly responsible.   
  
These provided the reasons for a seemingly out-of-the-blue, unannounced adoption of the first war orphan that either of them had ever seen. Mark was still a bit upset about this new turn of events, he felt he`d been given more than enough to put on his plate already, but Abbie had the persistence of a Blade Liger when her heart told her to do something. Against that, even his objections were fairly quick to melt away into nothing.   
  
There was just one problem with this new arrangement.   
  
A relatively big problem, too.   
  
"He still needs a name," she stated bluntly, with a tone that didn`t really suit her usually bubbly nature. Mark was somewhat indifferent, still not exactly used to the idea of taking on an orphan to raise as his own. Really, it was the kind of thing that tended to alter one`s life, and he was only barely twenty years old - soon to be twenty-one in a matter of three or four months.   
  
"Abbie."   
  
"Hm?"   
  
"Do you _honestly_ think that _I`m_ cut out to help raise a kid? Let alone a traumatized _war orphan_, who`s practically gone autistic?" He asked a bit half-heartedly, glancing down at her from where he had leaned against the door. The boy in question was still inside, he had simply fallen asleep in one of the semi-private dining spots, on a two-person loveseat normally reserved for people who were either quick enough to swipe it or had come in on a date. He`d done so without saying a word, only getting up and walking over to it before laying down and falling into unconsciousness in an instant.   
  
"And do you want the sugary, confidence instilling version or the blunt truth of what I`m about to say?" She asked in response, taking another sip from her water and then waiting for an answer. That was an even more uncharacteristic sign that the past month`s events had begun to take a fairly _major_ toll on her. Not only had the two of them had to deal with a the usual time apart, she`d also had to deal with him taking on a fairly dangerous profession, then had to watch their vacation get royally screwed by a psychopath and then this.   
  
And that wasn`t counting the little incident where Mark had kicked said-psychopath`s dead body down a flight of stairs, into the path of a speeding truck while it was still on a stretcher and in a bodybag. None of the police knew it had happened, but still.   
  
"Blunt truth. I don`t think I could handle any sugar right now," he commented with a bit of an uncharacteristic tone of his own, tucking his hands into his pants pockets and yawning, even if the sound of it was briefly obscured by the sound of an explosion outside the city, followed by a brief view of the severed head of a Helcat flying through the air before crashing into a high-skimming Sinker and knocking it out of the air.   
  
"I think you can handle it. I think it`ll kick your ass, but I think you can handle it."   
  
At that, Mark rose an eyebrow up so high that it twitched the ear on that side of his head. Abbie _never_ cussed. _Ever_.   
  
"You need sleep," he said with a sage, half-numbed tone, ignoring that annoying itching sensation that had continually been nipping at his arms ever since he had lost count of the hours he had been awake. Abbie merely gave him a sideways glance packed with enough sarcasm to make most people wince.   
  
"_You`re_ telling _me_ to get sleep? Come on, Mark..."   
  
"... Yeah, that _is_ kinda absurd, when ya put it like that..."   
  
"Besides."   
  
"Hm?"   
  
"We _would_ be sleeping if not for a certain _someone_ and her-" "- pointychinnedsilverhairedman-bitchofa-" "- boyfriend."   
  
Pause.   
  
"Did you really have to cut in like that?" She asked a bit glumly. Mark shrugged with a half-juvenile indifference that made him look almost like a kid.   
  
"Meat head," she mumbled out with a smile that would`ve probably twinkled if there were any sunlight out, the very atmosphere itself seeming the lighten between the two of them.   
  
"Jiggy bug."   
  
At that, both shared a sideways glance that made it hard to believe they were still stuck in what barely amounted to a safe haven in the midst of an otherwise desperate warzone where they were both getting what amounted to only a passing break from what they had formerly been doing, each reaching out at the exact same moment and holding hands before taking several sideways steps, which ended with Mark leaned against the wall of the diner and Abbie leaned sideways against him.   
  
  
Skidding, bladed feet tore through grass like a hot knife through butter, jumpjet engines cut out for all of three seconds and silence briefly fell in the cockpit of a second generation slaughterbeast, a killing machine piloted by a man who knew he was living on absolutely _borrowed_ time, at best, and if not that, then because he had simply been forgotten.   
  
First by his friends. Then by the very villains who had taken them away in the first place.   
  
Bill Chapman was _not_ a happy camper by any stretch of the imagination. He didn`t know which possibility insensed him more, and furthermore, he didn`t really give a shit. There wasn`t any other way to spell out the kind of anger he was feeling, anger that burned in his soul as brightly as that soul itself still burned in his eyes, leaving them to lightly glow with all the power and fury of something that had forsaken it`s very humanity.   
  
He was no longer a mere man. He wasn`t someone with the blood of an Ancient Zoidian coursing through his veins, he had no lineage to a great hero or villain like Bit Cloud or Kale Obscura, more than anything else in history, he was unique.   
  
He was alone.   
  
He was living on borrowed time.   
  
He had a _bomb_ strapped to his _neck_.   
  
He had one shock before he knew his time was about to run out, and if that shock came, Chapman was sure he would die without _anyone_ giving much thought to it. That was fine though, he didn`t care about anyone else anymore. To Hell with everyone.   
  
To Hell with his promise to his fallen team mates.   
  
To Hell with his promise to take out his former imprisoner.   
  
To Hell with his former partner and to Hell with the annoying little brat that the Organoid had chosen over him, _twice_. In a row.   
  
He didn`t care about them anymore.   
  
Three seconds had gone by. The thrusters re-ignited under the constant pressure he`d been applying to them and the Geno Breaker roared off of the ground all over again, setting the forest briefly ablaze with the fires of it`s jumpjets and leaving a pair of trees in the process.   
  
_ "Where the hell do I go now? What the fuck do I **do** now?"_ He asked himself several times, removing his hands from the controls and leering into the monitor on the right side of the cockpit, watching the thick forest and trees slowly start to thin out as he approached the vast desert that still covered the majority of the continent he was located on.   
  
Eerily, he felt something 'prod' his mind, so to speak. It was only familiar to him because he had spent close to two or three days forcing himself to create a telepathic bond to it.   
  
"You got an idea?" He asked aloud, still staring at the monitor. The Breaker had hit it`s lower peak for flight and begun to descend again by now, but it still responded in kind without so much as a single telepathic word or audible growl, an image flashing out of it`s memory and into his thoughts.   
  
"... Sounds like as good a place as any, I guess."   
  
And with that, the Geno shifted slightly in mid-air, skidding along sideways as it touched down, crushing another tree under it`s weight and then shifting again to point a little back to the left, promptly taking off all over again on a bylining course towards Romeo City, wherever it was in relation to him.   
  
  
Champton was a city that had been built around a massive Zoid and arms manufacturing plant, which itself had been built within the heavily protected walls of an old military installation that had once belonged to the Guylos Empire, then the Guardian Force and then had been left to rot. It had taken Donald Champ - the grandfather of Jerry Champ, Harry and Marry`s father - roughly sixteen years to fully renovate and restore the fortress itself, something that had been both a casual hobby and a half-paranoid precaution.   
  
Even after the sixty years it had been in the ownership of the Champ family, the fortress itself had lost none of it`s imposing military stature, bearing alloy-reinforced walls that had been polished to almost glass-like smoothness, though they still maintained a rugged edge that seemed like it could cut through resolve like a chainsaw through a loaf of bread, with several additional gun towers and missile emplacements that had been added through the past few years as groups like the Backdraft had become better known for stealing large groups of Zoids.   
  
Around the fortress itself was where the real Champton lay though, sprawling for at least a mile in every direction and running the gauntlet from quaint suburban homes to the upper class neighborhoods to the enormous mansion that the Champs themselves called home, it looked like a place that you could raise a family in for generations and make a good living while doing it. True to it`s image, that was exactly the case - the Champs looked out for their workers, that was another reason why the factory and the planned-city supporting it had been built in and around a fortress in the first place.   
  
Precautions upon precautions intertwined with genuine concern and respect, there were _reasons_ why the Champ Corporation had documented cases of entire families working for it over the course of multiple generations.   
  
The hitch to all of this was that the entire city`s combined command structure - ranging from civilian to the volunteer military - relied heavily on the Champs themselves. Unfortunately, for reasons yet to be revealed, all of that considerable _weight_ of responsibility had been dropped on the hapless shoulders of Harry Champ, the youngest son and current heir to the family prestige. He was the heir because, despite his little obsession with a certain 'lower class' girl and Zoid battling, Harry had what was probably the most balanced personality of the six children who had been born to Jerry and Sharon.   
  
Admittedly, he had been sheltered for a great deal of his life, but unlike his snobbish younger sister and his rebellious older brothers, he had effectively struck out on his own during his time in the chase for Leena Tauros` affections, if not in the financial sense, then in the sense that he had gotten to know people. He had hung out in the proverbial trenches with the average Joe and that raised him up a notch in his parents` eyes.   
  
At present, those eyes weren`t watching him, but another set was, and it was watching with a mixture of concern that had only barely even bothered manifesting itself, and a vague inkling of respect that hadn`t previously existed, though it was a respect born out of the fact that he was still _standing_ when he looked like death warmed over.   
  
"Alright," he finally mumbled out as the two came to a stop, now standing inside of what looked like a combination of the Office from Hell and an at-work sleeping area. The desk was half-cluttered with stacks of paper, there was a computer that looked like it had only been turned off for the past fifteen minutes, along with slightly dirtied plates, empty bowls and cups of what had been instant noodles, all of it stacked into a trash can that looked like it would`ve broken if anymore weight was applied to it`s insides.   
  
There was also an office-bed that looked similar to the type used by psychiatrists, along with a fairly old looking quilt and a scarcely used pillow bundled up near the head of it. There was a portable video phone lying on the floor near the bed, and the chairs that had formerly been in front of the desk had been shifted around, one to serve as an elevated foot rest, the other holding an even larger stack of papers than what was already on the desk itself, while a portrait of Sharon Champ hung a bit raggedly near the door, along with another portrait of the Champ children themselves, obviously done when Harry had been younger.   
  
The second thing that struck her, after the room`s rather wrecked appearance, was the chill in the air. Were she not wearing a turtlenecked, long sleeved shirt and pants, she probably would have felt cold. Instead, she reached up a hand and adjusted her glasses slightly to make sure that she wasn`t seeing things.   
  
Harry, on the other hand, took a few steps forward, then a few more, and then literally fell onto the office bed, twisting in the middle of it and landing in a seated position, even though he had shifted the piece of furniture back into the wall behind it. "Grill away," he said tiredly, plopping his hands in his lap and waiting with the look of someone about to be executed.   
  
"For starters, Harry," Leena began, pausing with a thoughtfulness that wasn`t really her style, taking a few steps after him and then plopping down next to him on the bed. "Where`ve ya been lately? We haven`t even gotten any of the usual stalker calls from you," she said, obviously leaving out the whole 'that was before the world ended, but still' part of things.   
  
Harry let out a ragged laugh and rubbed one eye with a dried fist before answering. "Mom and Dad got into an accident."   
  
"Hm?"   
  
"A low flying Whale King crashed into their Skimmer," he answered, suddenly looking _far_ less jovial than his tone implied. It was almost disturbing. "Then James got into an overdose, Monty ran off on a binge, Nicole went off to find him and came back looking like Hell, Marry curled in on herself and Renee went into denial. Then _this_ all happened and..."   
  
A pause. Another disheveled, half-hearted and utterly _empty_ chuckle followed before Harry continued, looking a bit relieved to get things off his chest, even if he wasn`t even seeing Leena next to him anymore. The guy had tunnel vision, and if his eyes were lasers, he would`ve burnt a hole through the wall he was staring at.   
  
"Marry hasn`t left her room in a week. James is still in the hospital, we don`t know where Monty is, Nicole`s too busy dealing with her own problems and Renee`s on the verge of trying to kill herself," he said with a suddenly _too_ sober tone. Harry Champ`s world had fallen apart at this point, his family was in tatters and he was the only one left who hadn`t imploded from the combined stress of personal loss and the apocalypse. _Yet_.   
  
"And I`ve been having to handle the workload..."   
  
"You haven`t slept since that night that this all started, have you?" Leena asked, finally breaking him of his unfocused rambling. At that, he let out another of those hollow chuckles and shook his head.   
  
"I haven`t had the time to, really, even before this all went down. First I had to shovel through all of Dad`s paperwork on finances and everything else - that meant crash coursing through a few economics courses and firing two of his former advisors who thought they could control me, then _re_-hiring them after they came to their senses, then when this happened, I had to keep order over everything and make sure people didn`t go nuts from the outside world caving in like it has. Crazy as it sounds, I had to keep going and make myself a bit of an idol to them," he explained, before Leena interrupted.   
  
"To keep _them_ going. But you haven`t bothered with yourself," she stated rather than asked. Another shake of the head came in answer, he didn`t say anything, propping his head up on one hand that was in turn propped up on one knee, leaving him hunched over slightly.   
  
"How`re things on your end?" Harry asked after an uneasy pause, taking a glance Leena`s way and seeming to look further than he did before, past the scars and beneath the skin. It was one of those glances you`d be more prone to see with people who had either been meant for each other or had spent their entire lives longing after one person, and in that moment, Leena Tauros realized just how much Harry really _did_ care for her.   
  
She also felt like something of an _idiot_ for not seeing it sooner.   
  
With a mild tingle in her stomach though, she brushed the feeling aside and leaned sideways, over the bundle of the quilt and pillow and onto the armrest.   
  
"Well... Let`s see..."   
  
"Go ahead, I`ve got the time. I hope," Harry mumbled at her pause, obviously referencing the communicator on the floor. It was plain to see that he was beginning to gain a growing contempt for the little device.   
  
"Bit ran off about two days before all Hell broke loose, then after that, Brad and Jamie both took off - Jamie mentioning something about his girlfriend and Brad running off to make sure he doesn`t get himself killed. Dad is as nuts as ever, he`s buried the hatchet with Leyon, who`s also as nuts as ever, Vega Obscura`s mom is now a part of our little group, Naomi and Leon joined up after we got to Romeo and I think you probably know the rest from there."   
  
"... Bit ran off?" Harry asked as if he hadn`t even heard the rest of what she had been telling him. He looked as if a few more pounds had been lifted off of his shoulders, not to mention a passing resemblance to a War Shark circling a busted up Sinker.   
  
"Yeah, he just... Took off, didn`t say good-bye, didn`t explain himself, just left. We haven`t seen him since," she explained without really carring. Bit wasn`t ever her favorite person after all, bar those times when she beat him over the head with a blunted object of some sort, at times like those, he was definately her favorite, but only that punching bag sort of way.   
  
"Yanno..."   
  
A brief pause and an out-of-place quiet as Harry actually bothered considering his words for once. Apparently gone was the lovesick sap who could spout off romantic poetry and glorifying nicknames like it was a second language of some kind, that had either gone dormant or been broken out of him completely for the time being.   
  
"Did you ever... Um..."   
  
"If you even _dare_ to suggest that I have even a _passing_ crush on that _twit_, I _will_ introduce you to a new definition of _pain and **suffering**_."   
  
"... Well, that`s a relief," Harry replied with a tone to match his words, even if his voice still sounded rubbery and worn down. "Now all I need is about three days of sleep, a hot bath and something that isn`t cooked out of a microwave," he commented drearily, and at that, another uncharacteristic instinct chimed through the girl who sat next to him.   
  
A few seconds passed by, then there was the sound of things being rearranged before Harry felt a hand grasping the back of his head and giving a tug. Even if he wasn`t weakened considerably by sleep deprivation, the teen would`ve probably caved in with a dumb grin on his face anyway, though said-dumb grin was absent at the moment. His head hit the pillow and for a few seconds, he held his breath, coming to the realization that the pillow was laid out across Leena`s lap, hearing the distinct sound of her sneakers thumping onto the floor and then feeling the movements of her legs under the pillow itself, shifting around until she was sitting indian-style with the quilt in hand.   
  
"Take your jacket off," he heard, complying without a second thought while at the same time kicking the loafers he had been wearing for the past half a week onto the floor at the foot of the bed. After that, the jacket found it`s way onto the floor, and then the quilt was spread out through the air and gradually pulled back down until it obscured the majority of his body from view, leaving only the dark blue, turtleneck shirt he wore underneath his jacket visible, and even then it was only by the collar of it.   
  
"I can`t give you three days, and I can`t give you a bath or any food, but I can still give you some rest. Go to sleep, Harry," she ordered with a stern, though _eerily_ gentle tone of voice, the kind that would`ve probably made Bit, Jamie and Brad all break their jaws on the floor at the very sound of it. "I`ll wake you up if anything serious comes through, alright?"   
  
A light, already half-asleep mumble was the response, and for the time being, at least for Leena Tauros and Harry Champ, all was right with the world, even if it was falling apart around them.   
  
  
***THUD!***   
  
Two figures dispersed from one another, large of the two being grossly inhuman, the second bearing a striking appearance to a half-zonked out raver thanks to her hair, eye and eyebrow color. The setting was relatively unfamiliar for either of them, merely an unocccupied section of the desert outside the forest, on a straight line from the base that the two had just teleported out of all of a minute ago.   
  
The first up was the rather twisted looking, mismatched Organoid, Borealis, his optics flaring and blinking out in the rough equivelent of a nervous twitch while his tail wagged about like that of a dog on crack, his snout showing those razor sharp teeth in what looked like - and actually _was_ - a fairly demented smile. The girl followed suit a few seconds later, springing up with an agility that she normally wasn`t capable of, though any and all grace was noticably absent in the process, her face contorted into an unbelievably _angry_ expression.   
  
**_ Now then...   
  
_** Quiet. The kind of quiet you could expect as the calm before a storm blew out the power lines while the TV remained active, permanently stuck on the crappiest infomercial you could have the misfortune of finding, your dog got hit by a steam roller, your cat choked to death on the gold fish, your genitals turned into butter, World War III began, Stalin came back to life as a neo-communist super zombie and atomic bombs were dropped on you like they were going out of style.   
  
In short, it was the kind of quiet most people _didn`t_ want to hear.   
  
**_ Shall we talk?   
  
_** "... What..."   
  
**_ Nownow, let`s not get too hasty, yes?   
  
_** "... The _fuck_..."   
  
**_ ... Aww, come on, Leyla, I didn`t mean anything bad...   
  
_** "... **_IS WRONG WITH YOU?!_**" The girl demanded irately, practically going rigid as her eyes started to water. Were she able to pay attention to it, she probably would`ve noticed the sonic boom fading in the distance, but the explosion visible from several miles away caught her eye a bit more.   
  
**_ ... Okay, Ifuckedup. Sorry!   
  
_** "Sorry? You`re _sorry_?"   
  
**_ Yepyep, I am, that I am.   
  
_** "**_SORRY DOESN`T BRING JAMIE BACK FROM THE DEAD, YOU FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!_**" She screamed angrily, causing the Organoid to almost fall over in what amounted to shock, though the sanity-deprived halfwit didn`t completely lose his balance, righting himself after a few moments and losing the demented grin. At this point, Leyla was actually starting to cry, which in turn effected both Borealis, and even if he didn`t know it, would`ve probably started to effect Bill Chapman as well, were he still in the general area.   
  
**_ Actually, he`s not dead, yanno...   
  
_** A pause.   
  
"**_WHAT?!_**"   
  
**_ ... Damnit, I`M THE ONE WHO`S SUPPOSED TO BE THE RAVING LUNATIC HERE, CALM THE FUCK DOWN!   
  
_** Another pause.   
  
"**_DAMNIT! BORIS, YOU TAKE ME TO HIM OR ELSE!_**"   
  
**_ BUT I WANTED TO TALK THINGS THROUGH! LIKE SANE, RATIONAL HUMAN BEINGS!   
  
_** "... _Hello_, **_NEITHER OF US ARE EVEN HUMAN!_**"   
  
**_ ... YEAH, SO?!   
  
_** "**_SO, WHAT`S THE POINT?!_**"   
  
Pause number three.   
  
**_ I just wanted to catch up, I guess...   
  
_** "On _what_, Boris? The fact that I haven`t seen you in ten years? The fact that I didn`t even remember you existed until you possessed my Zoid?"   
  
**_ Hey, damnit! Don`t pin that on me! YOU were the one who called ME, and I had me a nice fucking life too! Asshole.   
  
_** "A nice fucking life? With _who_?! That Breaker`s lunatic pilot?!"   
  
**_ THAT LUNATIC PILOT WAS MY FRIEND, DAMNIT! SHOW SOME RESPECT!   
  
_** Pause number four.   
  
At this point, Leyla`s resolve to keep arguing with the poorly painted brick wall known as Borealis crumbled away and stress took it`s toll, leaving what remained of Eliza to kick in and set things as close to right as possible.   
  
"Just take me somewhere else."   
  
**_ ... Gee, s`much for THAT effort at graceful reconciliation.   
  
_** "... We`ve both moved on, Boris. I`d really prefer that you unbonded yourself from me," she said bluntly, though how much she meant it was unclear. A Zoidian without an Organoid was as rare as a human who actually had one. They weren`t exactly common and they didn`t tend to live very long compared to the hundreds of years most Zoidians could tolerate before giving out to mortality.   
  
**_ And then what?   
  
_** "I don`t know, I don`t care," Leyla answered, rubbing one temple with her index and middle fingers. She was starting to get a headache just from being around this... Utter lunatic. _How_ had she ever been Bound to the thing to begin with? Had she really been _that_ different or...   
  
"You`ve changed too much for me. You need the one you really _are_ Bound to now, and that`s not me," she stated, coming to the conclusion with an almost robotic logic. "All I want - all I _need_ - is for you to take me somewhere else."   
  
_** ... Mmmkay, so... Whereto, then?**_ Borealis asked as if the entire string of words she had just thrown out had gone in one metallic ear and out the other with no effect.   
  
"I don`t know."   
  
**_ Dunno if I can take ya ta Splitface, he seems t`be a bit too... Cramped, at the moment.   
  
_** "Just take me somewhere safe. I don`t even know if I can really handle being around Jamie right now," she said, and meant it. It was true that she genuinely _did_ care a great deal about the youth, but quite frankly, she needed space to breathe right about now, and being around him probably wouldn`t have helped either of them.   
  
**_ `N` after that, we`re through, right?   
  
_** "Done."   
  
**_ Finished.   
  
_** "Over with."   
  
**_ Kaputsnick.   
  
_** "Yes. Something like that. Now can we just _leave_?"   
  
By way of response, the Organoid`s chest promptly split open, thick wiring practically spraying out to cover the short distance between the two, and a few seconds later, a multi-colored streak of light bolted through the sky to parts as yet unknown.   
  
  
There were few words to fit the scene of what had once been a Rommel-operated base that had been dubbed 'Clusterpoint 6A.' Among them were massacre, death, chaos and destruction, and all of them fit reasonably well given the fact that all of _two people_ had survived it, possibly only one given the situation that Brad Hunter had been in when he had jumped into the river.   
  
At the core of this little waltz through Hell though, two things in particular stood out above the rest. The first was a titanic black demon, thinly built in an almost raptor-like manner but still thick and powerful to behold, even if it looked almost completely unarmed with it`s shoulder panels clamped shut and it`s arms fully retracted to their base length, crest flipped back and charged particle cannon concealed in it`s throat, none of the visible weapons possessing the trademark glow that had dominated them when they were in use.   
  
The Geno Maxis was covered in small, spurting whisps of smoke, caused by everything from explosive slugs to plasma cannons, but none of the attacks could`ve damaged it. Kale had been so lazy during the attack that he had _intentionally_ let himself get hit at least sixty times before bothering to get serious, and by then, Hunter and Hameros had both fled. Not that he cared or anything. To him, this had been little more than the equivelent of someone putting together a doll house as a hobby, he hadn`t been too dedicated to annihilating the place anyway.   
  
Not that it hadn`t been thrown into oblivion, dragged back out, shot in the head with a .365 Magnum and then hung from a bridge to be hit by passing children with baseball bats like a pinata, but still.   
  
Bodies, parts of bodies, downed Zoids, chunks of downed Zoids, pieces of superstructure, shattered glass, burning liquids - it didn`t matter what it was, you were likely to find it dropped at random somewhere in the killing fields that had been Clusterpoint 6A, just as you were also likely to see the smaller, darker colored demon currently standing amidst the wreckage like a god of the underworld, darkly crystal blue optics shifting focus over the scene with a near minimalistic interest.   
  
This was too easy. Even accounting for the kind of power that we possess, this was still too easy.   
  
"Probably a setup to accomplish some other stupid plan and use us in the process," Kale deduced without so much as an ounce of concern, leaning back in the flight chair of the Geno Maxis` cockpit, which bore an eerily hybridized resemblance to both the Geno Breaker and Death Stinger cockpits. There was a single, all inclusive monitor scaling around the chair in a 360* view, while the front of each armrest bore gel-like panels that served as the controls by linking right up to the electrical currents of a pilot`s body, reading thoughts by specific patterns that Kale knew by instinct.   
  
That aside, though, it was rather spartan. To exit required either an Organoid to teleport the pilot out or for the monitor to split open and allow for the chair to extend down through the chest door common on the Geno Breaker and Saurer. It wasn`t much to look at, but Kale Obscura wasn`t someone who obsessed over appearances. Function over form, and all that.   
  
It wouldn`t surprise me.   
  
"A burger`d be nice," the mostly-human commented out of nowhere, removing his hands from the controls and leaning back with the realization that he hadn`t eaten anything since the night he`d met Shadow.   
  
You don`t need to eat. I`m providing you with the life to keep going.   
  
"And you don`t need to unbond from the core, I`m providing you with the time to take some very _un_needed rest."   
  
A lingering quiet as the Organoid shifted to place what looked like an eternal glare in the direction of the Zoid that looked like it`s big brother, though it was really looking right through layer upon layer of armor and circuitry to the bored looking young man in the cockpit.   
  
... Hnnn...   
  
"We`ll stop at the next town. There, I`ll get something to eat, you can disembowel some poor sap and then we`ll blow the fucking shit outta the dump, how`s that?"   
  
... I suppose it`ll work. One question though.   
  
"Shoot," Kale replied with a casual tone that sounded utterly disturbing given their current location and what they`d done there mere minutes earlier.   
  
You do know... That the very reason we came out here got away from us, correct?   
  
A dulled, knowing chuckle escaped, and for the first time in well over a century, Shadow found himself outright intimidated, not by a Zoid, not by an Organoid or even a Zoidian, but by a human being - a mostly-human being, anyway. The last time had been the result of a specific, then-murderously dedicated man in his mid-twenties with messy blonde hair.   
  
Shadow didn`t like to be intimidated. He liked being left out of the know even less, but at the same time, he was too Bound to Kale to feel anger over it.   
  
"I let him escape for a single purpose, my dear little Organoid."   
  
And why is that?   
  
"Because he jumped into a fucking whitewater river filled with rocks and debris. Kinda redundant to chase him down, don`t you think?" Kale asked bluntly, unconcerned with the fact that he hadn`t seen Brad Hunter die. In all likelihood, the former mercenary would end up passing out in the water and being battered to death or drowned by the river. They had bigger fish to fry than someone who was already going to end up dead before the first ray of morning light ever bothered shining through.   
  
"Any nearby towns?"   
  
Pfeh. Like I bother keeping tabs on 'human civilization.' Your people are fucking pathetic.   
  
"... Like you really have to tell me? About the only thing most humans are good for is screaming when they die. And even then, most can`t even do _that_ right," Kale muttered out, placing his hands back to the controls and guiding the Maxis into a slow, steady walk forward, uncaring of how close a town was in that direction. A long journey would just make the food and the slaughter a bit more pleasant. "C`mon, Fido."   
  
Don`t call me that.   
  
"_Fido_."   
  
... If you weren`t you, I`d murder you.   
  
"If you weren`t you, _I`d_ murder _you_."   
  
Neither spoke after that. They didn`t really have to.   
  
  
If not for the constant, tortured cries of the sound barrier, one could`ve almost heard the sound of hair rustling, of bone and skin shifting about in a process that should have been scientifically impossible. A few moments dragged by an what sounded like a strangled gasp of air that had been withheld for too long burst out of the mouth of a desperate, glary-eyed youth, hands locked so tightly to the controls of the Raynos that his palms were starting to go numb, losing their color beneath the texture of his gloves.   
  
His eyes felt watery but dry at the same time, sweat dripped down along the face that was so often consumed by a pleasant - if not reclusive - expression, an expression replaced by a look similar to someone drowning. For a long moment, he did nothing but breathe, noting the painful feeling at the back of his skull that had been becoming more and more frequent over the past days. Tiredly, he felt his body pulled back in the seat, instinctively dragging the speed of the Raynos down to a manageable level in the process. It wasn`t that Jamie couldn`t handle flying at mach three anymore, he could do so with an increasing level of ease that almost scared him, it was that he was exhausted.   
  
Mentally, physically and emotionally, he had been through the ringer a few times in the past days and hadn`t even stopped to think about it.   
  
"Not that it matters," he grumbled to himself, languidly reaching a hand up and rubbing the side of his throbbing head. His memories of the events during Will`s spurt of control were sketchy at best, downright blurry at worst, but he could still see the expressions on the faces of the mechanics as they realized they were going to die no matter what they did, and the look on the face of the guard as his head flopped down and his body dropped to the floor.   
  
He could see those with crystal clarity. They were probably going to give him nightmares for weeks.   
  
"Just gotta find Leyla... Then get back to the guys," he told himself, feeling the Wild Eagle lurch back into remission. The other personality had been taxed to maintain control, something was starting to change and Jamie didn`t know what it was, he also didn`t really feel that it was important at the moment.   
  
His only crystal-clear objectives were his missing girlfriend and then getting back to the Blitz Team.   
  
Brad was most likely dead.   
  
That itched at his senses, especially considering how much trouble the mercenary had gone through over the past weeks as a result of Jamie`s actions. From going missing for hours on end to turning up with a stolen jeep after massacring a Rommel-owned base of some kind to making the guy paranoid to unwittingly dragging him off to his own demise, it left a pit somewhere in the teen`s heart to think of the role he had played in Brad`s death, but that was offset by another guilt that only Will really knew of.   
  
During the last battle the Blitz Team had managed to fight as a cohesive unit, in Class S, on the very day before the end of the world as everyone knew it, Jamie Hameros had made a decision that still weighed heavily on his senses and left him feeling too numbed inside to really feel remorse over the death of his team mate.   
  
That was because Jamie had stopped thinking of Brad, Leena and Bit as team mates at the exact moment that he had shifted his sights from the Konig Wolf to the Scout Fox. He`d had every intention of pulling the trigger and disqualifying his own team. If not for Rayth Takahori`s timely interference, he would have done just that. He had been willing to sell out a group of people he looked up to and cared for as if they were his own family, but there was another guilt that nagged even at that.   
  
He hadn`t felt trust for Brad Hunter since the incident with the Shadow Fox. A new Zoid had seemingly shifted the former mercenary`s loyalties and afterward, Jamie had never quite trusted the man as anything more than a team mate. He didn`t think of him as a greedy older brother, he had just taken to thinking of him as a complete bastard who could only be trusted as far as he could be thrown. Jamie hadn`t ever said these things, but it had been half the reason he had intentionally given such a cryptic answer about his loyalties in the first place.   
  
And now, Brad was dead.   
  
The biggest guilt of all, though, was that even if he had a pit in his heart for the man he had once thought of as a brother, he didn`t actually _feel_ it.   
  
He didn`t care.   
  
And _that_ was what nagged at him the most.   
  
_ "Just keep moving. It`s almost time,"_ he heard himself - or had it been Will? - think in a vaguely reassuring manner before taking a deep breath and exhaling.   
  
It was at about that time, as the sun started to either come up or he entered another timezone, that the teenager finally looked up from the floor of the cockpit and set his eyes on a rapidly closing object somewhere in the distance. Almost instantly, his expression tightened considerably, and strength that hadn`t been there before seemed to materialize into his blood from nowhere, eyes narrowing with hateful intent.   
  
"It _is_ time," he muttered out, watching the escaped Whale King start to slow down to what was most likely a combat speed, apparently having noticed him.   
  
Apparent became definate a few seconds later as Jamie watched the stomach of the huge Zoid spring open into a pair of gigantic, bomb bay-like doors, what looked like a near-hundred Foxbats promptly starting to drop out into view, with a pack of what looked to be dark green night owls dropping out after them, each forming up into an escort position in a mass formation around their mothership.   
  
One to a hundred. Odds that the Wild Eagle would`ve, could`ve, and _should have_ grinned maniacally at.   
  
Jamie just growled to himself and again tightened his hands onto the controls of the Raynos. Guilt took a back seat.   
  
"I`ll end this now, you son of a _bitch_," he said, never once hearing his alternate self speaking up in a cynical mumble just beforehand.   
  
_ "Nah. It`s not time yet. Soon though..."   
  
_ If Jamie had bothered listening, he still wouldn`t have cared.   
  
With a saurian shriek, the Raynos burst forward, just as every single escorting Zoid around the Whale King broke formation and lunged right back at the incoming attacker, though the young Hameros seemed completely unphased. Be it stress, anger, raw hatred, temporary madness or a flat-out self-delusion, Jamie refused to back down. He didn`t turn back, he didn`t even bother to try and evade any lock-ons.   
  
Instead, he smiled like a raving mad man, heedless of the fact that he didn`t even have the communications system online and equally heedless of the fact that he was going on what amounted to a suicide mission with utterly reckless abandon.   
  
"_One, two, three..._"   
  
A pause after his whisper. Warning lights flashed all over the cockpit glass, accompanied by beeps for each and every single one of them.   
  
"_Here I come with the wicked._"   
  
And with that, the sound barrier screeched in violation as the Raynos gained more speed, followed instantly by missiles of every size dropping off the wings of a hundred different attackers at once, every last one of them aimed right at the sole attacker who was coming right at them like a bat out of Hell itself.   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty  
  


_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Notes:** The utter convenience... XD  
  
*Promptly beats his head into the desk.* Well, Mark is finally starting to show his long-hidden serious side(even if he did it in a silly sort of way), Bill`s starting to feel like Doctor Zoidberg, Harry`s seeming corpse-ness has been explained, Leena seems to be evolving, Borealis and Leyla have called it quits, Kale is still Kale and Jamie...  
  
Jamie`s gone off the deep end.  
  
And yes, 'Boris' is Borealis` real name. Monty and Nicole are short for Montgomery and Nicolette, if anyone`s curious.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Glad so many people agree with me about One fitting the Hellwalker, though it [SPOILER] [SPOILER] [SPOILER] [SPOILER]. ... Gee, ain`t I a stinker? :p As for Kale - methinks everyone overestimated his temper and underestimated his personality. He`s thorough but only to the point that he gets what he wants. Remember, most of his kills only came about because they were in the way of his primary goal at the time(Raven Heights being leveled so he could get to Alteil, Garnhelm Base getting the AHBLATS treatment to scare the crap outta Bit, etc).  
  
**Illidan:** Jamie`s a mixed bag. He _does_ have more strength than most people credit him for but he **also** tries to ignore a good deal of his troubles as best he can. I doubt Roc and Madison will be dying anytime soon, I need them for one, and for another, [insert SPOILER signs here]. They also aren`t really turning Bit into a Kale-killing machine, nor are they really making him into an UberVan copy, but you`ll see how he turns out by the time they finish with him. As for Harry... Well, making him an angsty, brutalized simp isn`t something new(just look at any Harry-basher fic... Or any angst fic involving him as a main character x_e), but doing it to actually improve him probably is.  
  
Well, that`s all for now folks. Leave a review, enjoy, Sh33p out, expect mucho AHBLATSATSM next chapter and see ya next time! 


	21. Just Got Wicked

  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
_ Just Got Wicked_   
  
  
  


Seconds ticked by in what felt like completely abstract silence. Sonic booms loud enough to shatter ordinary glass like a sledge hammer rattled through the lower atmosphere, and yet it all fell upon deaf ears as a hundred missiles dropped from a hundred different aerial Zoids, pausing for what felt like a million eternities rolled into one that only lasted for the amount of time it took for each thruster of each weapon to flare to life.   
  
_ I can taste your innocence   
  
_ In the cockpit of the lone, suicidal attacker, the smile from before only seemed to grow a bit wider. Expression changed, a look of impending satisfaction so often associated with happiness and joy became something that could terrify anything short of a certain genocidal maniac still located dozens, perhaps a hundred or more miles away by now, and possibly even him. It was that same twisted smile that had been worn by Hiltz as the Great Ring rose up from the ground around the Death Saurer to split a single charged particle beam into attempted genocide, but there were differences.   
  
_ Young and sweet like mother made ya   
  
_ The smile of Hiltz had been arrogant. There was no ego here.   
  
The smile of Hiltz had been filled with malice. There was no malice here.   
  
The smile of Hiltz had been pale and distorted by Core cells.   
  
The smile of Jamie Hameros looked even more menacing because of his naturally tanned skin, making him appear as if he was living in a shadow, but the lack of Core cells meant that there was no visible distortion.   
  
If any of the enemy pilots had been able to see this smile, they would have saved themselves the hassle and just committed suicide.   
  
_ Everything froze into ice   
  
_ Time stopped, everything held in place for another eternity as the missiles seemed to go nowhere fast because of the relative speed at which they had been dropped, and then their engines truly lit up and time resumed it`s terrible pace, sending every single munition careening on a suicide dive for the crazed Raynos that was still continuing _straight for them_.   
  
_ These mother fuckers   
  
_ And not only was it continuing straight for them without even _bothering_ to _try_ and dodge away from impending death...   
  
_ Just -   
  
_ It was _gaining speed_ while doing so.   
  
_ - **got** - _  
  
The fourth limit of the sound barrier shattered into a million sobbing pieces and the Raynos blasted forward even faster than it should have ever been capable of without some sort of modification, heading straight for the enclosing net of super sonic death -   
  
_ - **WICKED!!!   
  
**_ - and _passing right through it_, unscathed.   
  
_ Well, I can't explain this little man   
  
_ Fifty explosions sounded out as the missiles rammed into a mach four sonic boom head-on, atmosphere being raped aside like it wasn`t even there and in the process, every single one of the Rommel pilots woke up to the epiphany that they were in for the fight of their lives. They had gone from the acid-filled frying pan and into the napalm-fueled fire.   
  
_ Takin' over, can't explain the way   
  
_ And as they realized that, every last one of them could almost swear to hearing a screaming, howling laughter echoing alongside the incoming sonic boom as the Raynos blew through their ranks as if they didn`t even exist as more than vague holograms in a shoddily built combat simulator.   
  
_ That I feel   
  
_ And only after they realized that the Raynos had gone through them - only then, did a select few of them feel their Zoids popping apart from the delayed effects of the light green assassin`s wingblades gutting through them seconds before, and even if most of the survivors of the initial run had managed to escape the incoming sonic boom to follow, another twelve of them were promptly pulled back down by a vacuum effect and blown out of existence by their own missiles in a violent fireworks display that left debris to fall towards the surface of the planet, miles below.   
  
Those remaining quickly recovered from the initial shock, whether as a result of pure adrenaline or raw, drilled-in training, each of them managed to stabilize by the time that the Raynos began to slow down, banking into a wide, almost methodically avoidant turn away from the Whale King. Seventeen Foxbats had just been sliced and blown out of the sky. Seventy-three Foxbats and twelve Nightwise Zoids were left in the air.   
  
It had taken five seconds.   
  
_ Well, I can't explain this little man   
  
_ "What in the _fuck_ are we dealing with?!" One of the remaining pilots shouted out, voicing the fearful emotions of them all in a single sentence. It was almost morbidly and ironically coincidental that the temporary voice of the group was next to go, his Foxbat going down from four rapid bolts of hot plasma, all of which struck in the _exact_ same point since the Raynos had intentionally wobbled with every shot fired.   
  
The cockpit exploded, the pilot died and a hot red fireball tumbled from the skies.   
  
_ Takin' over, can't explain the way   
  
_ "**_AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!_**"   
  
The laugh was completely over the edge. There wasn`t a single sane, good string tied to it, and it only precursed more death as the Raynos plunged into the mass of Rommel fighters, forcing the creation of a single, enormous furball of combat, rolling through the air towards the air king as eighty-four Zoids went after one attacker with every intent to kill and not _be_ killed, but as history goes to show in so many cases...   
  
_ That I feel   
  
_ Certain intentions can never be met.   
  
Ten more Foxbats dropped like flies. The first two were diced by the Raynos` wings, the third was hit with a raptor-like drop-and-claw manuever that forced the light green Zoid`s heavy feet right into the topside of it`s victim before springing back off, first crushing and then shredding away the entire upper half of the doomed Foxbat and forcing it to explode in a vicious flash. Victims four and five were dealt with even more swiftly, each blazing up through the fireball of their former comrade and promptly being shot down by the tail-mounted pulse guns at the base of the Raynos` rear-end.   
  
The remaining six had the extreme misfortune of being caught in the supersonic backwash of a snap-corkscrew motion that lead the Raynos to dive down, all six of the Foxbats crumpling like tin cans under the force of the attack.   
  
_ Everyone got twisted up   
  
_ The first downed Nightwise followed, the pilot foolishly trying to copy the Raynos` earlier drop-and-claw strike only for the other Zoid to pre-emptively shift into a half-barrel roll and slice through it`s would-be attacker like a hot knife through butter, a wingblade gutting between the legs and straight to the base of the stumpy neck of the dark green night owl, leaving the remains of another sonic boom to do the rest.   
  
_ All your friends got behind my back   
  
_ The pulverized remains of the Nightwise fell earthward and exploded, the Raynos slowed down and more missiles flashed through the air, this time fired from a short distance by another Nightwise. It was almost through a precognitive reflex that the pilot of the Raynos dodged out of the way at the last possible second, shifting to the side and folding his wings in before slinging through the air like an acrobat.   
  
The missiles continued on into an attacking Foxbat at near point blank, the Raynos passed through the flames and emerged, ripping whisps of fire along with it in an epic cry of war, mirrored by the insane pilot who flew it with a skill more expected of his alter-ego than he himself. Smoke-shrouded wingblades beheaded another Foxbat, the Raynos promptly corkscrewed around again and dropped, temporarily without power and temporarily without a care in the world.   
  
_ And broke it   
  
_ And then it seemed to stop in mid-air, wings flapping back out, engine blazing back to life as another Nightwise whipped around the newly destroyed Foxbat with uncanny skill and precision, but not uncanny enough. A hail of gunfire and the remains of the Nightwise dropped like a ton of bricks, the Raynos streaking by with what almost sounded like a maniacal laugh.   
  
_ Cuz it's my world   
  
_ "I suppose it was a bit too much to hope for a clean getaway," Vilhelm commented, watching the carnage with disinterest thanks to viewscreen in the commanding officer`s lounge he and Spectacle had materialized in. The Organoid only let out a disdainful growl, able to sense every single Zoid death as if it were a nonexistent hair being plucked from his nonexistent scalp by a pair of tweezers. It was annoying more than anything else.   
  
_ I`d hazard a guess that Hameros escaped while Kale was busy taking his sweet time dismantling Clusterpoint 6A.   
  
_ "Then we gambled a bit too much on him."   
  
_ And Shadow. Chances are, they`ve probably already figured out that we played them like fools.   
  
_ "Doesn`t matter. Hameros will gun down this Whale King and we can lay low without having to worry about any potential assassination attempts for a while."   
  
_ Eh...   
  
_ Vilhelm spared a sideways glance to his old partner, one brow quirked up questioningly as those villainously green eyes stared into a set of insidiously red optics.   
  
_ I suppose so, but what about factional in-fighting?   
  
_ "Merely serves to eliminate future resistance to our long term goals. In the mad grabs for power after my supposed death, commanders will form groups and those groups will take each other out while trying to establish their own miniature dominions. The sudden lack of globally coordinated strategy will give surviving military groups the chance to get their wits together and try to mount a counter-offensive and the ensuing brushfire campaign will wipe out one or the other and leave the survivors too weak to pose any real threat," the thirty-three year old explained, having practically figured things out as if it were overly simplified child`s play.   
  
And to him, it really was.   
  
_ And where do you propose we stay, during this time?   
  
_ "The Dome, of course. We`ll be within a constant arms reach of our eventual success, and if communications to the outside world just... _Happen_ to go down shortly afterward, it`ll just play into our hands to cause further panic among the warlords that`ll spring up in the aftermath. Not only that, but we`ll be located in the safest place on Zi and surrounded by the most intelligent, loyal underlings that bribery can buy."   
  
_ You really do cover all the bases, don`t you?_ Spectacle asked with a thin layer of amusement, watching another Nightwise get shot to pieces and cut to ribbons in the same pass. Rommel only let out an extremely stifled chuckle before glancing back at the monitor as well, arms crossed over his chest with that perpetually scheming look on his face. _Though, I would love to see how events play out with the two big fish we`ve sent off to fry..._  
  
"Turpscavey will strike out on her own for a short while, then curiosity will get the better of her and she`ll attempt to bring the Black Ultra to Nyx. Henry will continue being his usual maniacal self until he either dies from running out of stimulants and going through withdrawls or commits suicide. Or someone will end up destroying him - _probably_ one of the Obscuras or a survivor from his sloppy work at destroying things - or he`ll just keep going until we have to strike him down ourselves."   
  
With that, Vilhelm and Spectacle exchanged another glance, the human issuing out a knowing smirk and the Organoid replying with a telepathic snicker.   
  
_ Well, I`d say we`ve kept things to the realm of believability.   
  
_ "Take us straight out from the nose, my good fellow. The less likely that the Wild Eagle sees us, the more likely he`s going to continue on his rampage and destroy everything in sight."   
  
_ Indeed, bar one little catch.   
  
_ "Oh?" Vilhelm asked, genuinely surprised for the first time in over a decade.   
  
_ That`s not the Wild Eagle. That`s Hameros himself.   
  
_ "... _Interesting_," Rommel commented curiously, taking one final look into the monitor before he and Spectacle made good to leave.   
  
_ 1...   
  
_ A scream.   
  
_ 2... _  
  
Explosions. _  
  
3...   
  
_ Death.   
  
_ Here I come with the wicked...   
  
_ "**_IS THIS THE BEST YOU`VE GOT?!_**" Came the uncharacteristically loud challenge from the uncharacteristically insane Jamie Hameros, just as two more Foxbats split in half against the razorblade wings of the Raynos, which finally slowed back down just long enough to snap into a J-turn and reverse back, flying upside down and tagging another Nightwise across the left flank with a volley of gunfire, which also served to detonate it`s remaining missiles.   
  
_ Well, I can't explain this little man   
  
_ As a bolt of green light shot out of the Whale King and out of sight, the Raynos corkscrewed around at an impossible angle, dragging along all three of the remaining Nightwise Zoids into a downward spiral. Of a force once numbering at a hundred and two, only twenty-five remained, and while all of the remaining Rommel pilots had found that their Zoids were rapidly sustaining damage from attacks that came as if their assassin was practically toying with them, the Raynos itself had yet to be touched in even the slightest way by their own counter-attacks.   
  
_ Takin' over, can't explain the way   
  
_ A breakneck slowing, the Nightwise pilots realized too late that they had been lured into a trap, even as the tail guns of the Raynos swiveled up and shot down a pair of Foxbats overhead. All three seemed to move in slow motion between the shots, passing by their target without ever actually touching it and then coming to try and stop as well, each hitting their air brakes at the same time and each trying to pull away as well.   
  
A shortlived stream of gunfire, the Nightwise at the rear of the group promptly broke apart into a mid-air fireball, hurling debris and flaming ghosts into the atmosphere as the remaining pair swiftly shifted into a new formation, one tailing just behind the other and both flying paralell, streaking into a tight turn upwards as their attacker burst through the flames above, coming down in a sharp barrel roll with all the relative speed and grace of a screaming samurai warrior, razor blade wings passing through cockpit glass, metal and flesh with the same efficiency in each material, leaving pilots to sit there in dumbfounded shock for seconds before their bodies exploded into split sections, blood spraying across rapidly seperating controls.   
  
The pass had been made, both Nightwise continued up for several more moments before their engines cut out and their bodies split into two perfectly cut sections each, both of which promptly exploded.   
  
There were twenty-one Foxbats left. One Raynos had single-handedly slaughtered everything else in the sky but a single, fleeing Whale King and an Organoidian blur that had already departed, unseen by the merciless attacker.   
  
_ That I feel   
  
_ "You`re pathetic," he muttered out, one eyelid twitching dangerous as the lunatic smile that had been plastered onto his face for the past minutes faded to a displeased grimace that would`ve made the devil himself cringe in fearful horror, which promptly drained to a completely neutral expression that seemed eerily similar to that of a computer.   
  
Gunshots. The entire world blurred at the sound of them, the skies became a distorted mess of blue and white, highlighted by a rising golden disk and shadowed by the tremendous mass of a fleeing, terrified carrier Zoid, even as more explosions filltered through the vast emptiness above the planet that sat obliviously below.   
  
_ Well, I can't explain this little man   
  
_ Four Foxbats. The first had it`s main body vaped by gunfire, the second was raked by talon-bearing feet and the third was surgically lobotomized with a mid-air katana, the razor edge of the Raynos` wingtip perfectly splitting through shattering cockpit glass and slicing through the helmet and face of the unlucky pilot before drawing back out, the light green Zoid breaking into a barrel roll and stabbing it`s other wing straight up in the process.   
  
The already-doomed Foxbat had it`s stomach split open, then promptly blew itself into oblivion while the Raynos - formerly seeming frozen in mid-air - regained speed, slipping over the fourth by inches and then tearing over it`s back with a reverse firing of the secondary cannons on the tail.   
  
Sixteen Foxbats remained.   
  
_ Takin' over, can't explain the way   
  
_ Fifteen Foxbats remained. The next to go down had been unlucky enough to try and loop S-turn over the Raynos and catch it within a pair of sonic shockwaves moving in opposite directions.   
  
The pilot had been skilled enough that he pulled the manuever off, but he hadn`t been skilled enough to foresee the way that the Raynos simply dropped into his own jet stream and used it like a slingshot to gain even more speed, coming up from behind and slicing the unlucky Zoid right in half from between the legs to between the eyes, breaking away in a single fluid motion as Jamie wildly pulled the trigger, gunning down another of the Foxbats at the same time that the first had fallen apart.   
  
Thirteen Foxbats remained.   
  
Thirteen lives standing between those on the Whale King and absolute death.   
  
Thirteen speed bumps in a parking lot, caught in the path of a tank driven by a homicidal maniac.   
  
_ That I feel   
  
_ Thirteen people who were never going to live to see another mid-day sun.   
  
***BANG!***   
  
_ Twelve_ people who were never going to live to see another mid-day sun.   
  
_ You are the love I never had   
  
_ The seconds ticked by in abstract, deafening silence as a certain mishmashed Organoid by the name of Borealis streaked through low orbit, visible as little more than a bolt of raw, corkscrewing and conflicting energies that matched the turmoil that was boiling within both he and his thoughtfully speechless bondmate. Soon-to-be-_former_ bondmate, to be specific, but still one of the only two people that the crazed Organoid genuinely even knew existed.   
  
It was one thing to be absent minded, it was another to live one`s life in a constant, denial-laced nervous breakdown filled with moments of seriousness so intense that you forgot everything but the people who had kept you alive in the first place. It was another, still, to be forsaken by both of them for apparently betraying them in favor of one another.   
  
If Borealis had been human, he`d`ve probably given out to heart failure by now.   
  
As it stood though, he and Leyla were giving one another the silent treatment. 'Boris' didn`t know what to say, Leyla didn`t know what to think and as it stood, that wasn`t changing any time soon.   
  
Through the energy signature that they had become, both of the two passengers in each other`s mutual dislike were able to detect the feel of the airless void beginning to give way to Zi`s upper atmosphere, the gradual, apparent pull of gravity from the other planets in the system, and from the moons faintly visible in the distance, beginning to fade away in favor of the dulled warmth of re-entry.   
  
Ozone split into a wake-like trail around them, and after a few more seconds, the two vanished out of space and back into the atmosphere, bylining for a cluster of mental signatures located in the city of Champton.   
  
_ You are the love I never had   
  
_ More explosions.   
  
_ Well, I can't explain this little man   
  
_ At last though, the final pilot amongst the formerly one-hundred-strong escort wing of the Whale King opened his eyes from a single blink, and for him, time itself slowed down. The cockpit flared with a dozen warning alarms, an eject warning popped up onto a console`s monitor, he felt his grip automatically tighten and relax as stress lifted into an eerie sensation of perfect calm, terror fading away to be replaced by ironic annoyance and every single, labored breath that would`ve taken halves of seconds to get in and out seeming to stretch out to hours in length.   
  
His life flashed before his eyes in an instant, and then time sped back up and the razor blade wing of the Raynos cut a lethal swath of automatic death through the cockpit, splitting the unfortunate pilot into diagonal halves before the larger Zoid whipped away with the fluid, impossible grace of something right out of myth and legend, leaving the Foxbat to continue on for several seconds before splitting in two and exploding.   
  
_ Takin' over, can't explain the way   
  
_ The Whale King banked hard to the right, trying in futility to ascend in the process, but by then, it was already too late.   
  
_ That I feel   
  
_ So many different things happened over the course of the following number of seconds that it defied comprehension. Men and women screamed in horrified awe, a commander realized he had been left to die and suddenly found himself wishing for a last cigarette, some among the number of crew on the former-Fatalistic Renegade sought escape by parachutes and escape pods, but it was a moot point to try and get out by the time that an avian, saurian shriek screeched through the ears of those who could actually hear it, rattling them all to the core while the small green Zoid slowed down to an almost perverse speed.   
  
A mind-numbed pilot lined up his sights, a secondary personality mentally shook his head with passing regret and in a matter of moments, Jamie Hameros felt his entire world shake and rattle, and he saw as it all blurred into vague lines of cracking, burning metal and splattering blood, terrified faces and damnation-filled eyes. He saw it, he felt it and he slipped through it all in a daze.   
  
Realization struck, tension built up through years of percieved uselessness faded away, replaced by horror as the sounds of his own gunshots caught up with him, only to be shut out instantly as a thunderous explosion filled his ears in the process, coming from behind and leaving him temporarily blinded thanks to the sun.   
  
By the time the automatic dimmer system kicked in, the storm had passed and rational sanity had returned, bringing with it a shell shocked sense of guilt that was intense enough for a snapping change to occur.   
  
_ Well I can't explain the way that I...   
  
_ The Wild Eagle, now in control, spared a glance towards the burning, falling remains of what had once been a mighty Whale King, giving only a mute shake of the head and then keying in the global positioning system that allowed the Raynos the majority of it`s long term navigation. The system was still intact, he noticed, though he didn`t bother to say anything pleasant about it.   
  
Instead, he just did the only things he could.   
  
He did the things he was made to do.   
  
_ Well I can't explain the way that I...   
  
_ He took over when Jamie was too helpless to do anything, and when no one else would, he provided a silent ear, a neutral witness who couldn`t claim any possible moral highground and who wouldn`t try to impose any thoughts or feelings.   
  
And as the Raynos eased back out of mach four and slowed towards the sub-sonic speed limit, Will waited. He waited because there was nothing better to do but point the Raynos for a specific point in the distance and he waited because, even though there really _was_ nothing better to do, there was also nothing else he _could_ do.   
  
Jamie Hameros had gone from being a hapless sidekick with issues of his own to being a mass murderer. It had taken under thirty minutes and it had required only a single sight to trigger it.   
  
_ "... Oh, God..."   
  
_ If Jamie had been in control, Will knew that the face they shared would`ve been tear soaked in a matter of seconds.   
  
_ Well I can't explain the way that I feel...   
  
"What have I done?"   
  
_ "What you had to," came the reply, and then nothing else. Will was the only being alive who could hear the telepathic equivelent of sobbing that followed the Raynos in it`s high flight towards whatever destination the alternate personality had decided upon, and when put into perspective...   
  
That was probably about the only good thing that had happened in the past hours.   
  


_ End Chapter Twenty-One_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** If ya needed a Foreword to figure out what song you were supposed to listen to during **this one**, something is wrong with you :P  
  
And folks: Rest assured that I`m not through mind fucking you all when it comes to Will and Jamie. I still have quite a bit planned for them...  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Well put, my good man, well put >_>  
  
That`s all for now, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	22. Foreshocks

  
  
**Foreword:** Can`t really pick any for this. Go with your own.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Foreshocks   
  
  
  


The grass was wet beneath him, but the air was soft and warm, gentle breezes that smoothed over his injured carcass _infinitely_ better than the brutal carelessness of the rock-strewn rapids that had knocked him unconscious however long ago. His head was still throbbing, his vision in one eye was almost completely red-shifted and the other was merely blurred, but he was still alive. His ribs felt like he`d been through a gangland initiation ceremony and it hurt to breathe, but he was alive.   
  
He was alone in nature, an unknown distance from civilization, injured from head to toe, but he was _alive_.   
  
Raggedly, Brad Hunter let out an exhausted smile, limply dragging himself further away from the slower moving waters of the shallow part of the river he had just escaped from, trailing along bits of blood and a shred or two of his clothing in the process. He didn`t bother assessing any of his injuries, not yet anyway. No point in bothering when he already knew he was probably in the worst shape he`d been in for five or six years, maybe longer.   
  
_ "So much for bein` a nice guy,"_ he chastised himself exhaustedly, continuing to pull along on his elbows and occasionally trying to work his hips and his limp legs into giving an extra push or two. It was an exhaustive process for an already exhausted man, a man who kept moving along for no apparent reason, one eye shut, face clenched into an expression of pained determination.   
  
Determination that could only keep up for so long, giving out as Brad came to the base of a tree. It held an eerie familiarity for him, similar to one he had often run around during his youth, back in the forests around his home town. It had been when he was an ordinary street rat, spending some of his days running off from the orphanage that frequently tried to take him in, oftentimes with a kid or two his own age. They would play for a few hours, then the nuns or the priest who ran the orphanage would find them and drag them all back.   
  
A defeated chuckle formed at the thought of those days, even if it hurt to try laughing.   
  
A few more seconds followed and his bruised, uncovered arms reached out to the tree, pulling himself along some more until turning around and propping himself up against it. His back was numb, and not for the first time, he felt a small inkling of relief in that his former imprisoners had forced him to switch back to his original clothing when he`d been caught. Made him more recognizable to them, even if Brad himself felt that it was a poor choice to do when a prison uniform could`ve accomplished the same.   
  
Not that he was complaining, but still.   
  
The distant chugging sound of an engine was the only thing he could hear as his eyes started to slip shut, every ounce of energy having long since been siphoned out of his ragged, battered body as those bruised arms fell to his sides and his numbed legs stretched out, sopping wet still due to the fact that his pants were made of a water absorbant type of fiber. His head craned forward a bit and the sound of the engine came to a slow stop, replaced by the whistling songs of the native birds.   
  
  
Exhaustion seemed an increasingly common thread on the planet of Zi, a world whose current population was all descended from over a half a million exiled prison inmates. Not that many people remembered or cared about this fact anymore. Bit Cloud was among those who didn`t remember and wouldn`t have cared even if he did. The only real interests that history had ever had for him were around the times of Van Fleiheit and the other heroes of the Guylos-Helic wars, and even that had recently lost its appeal with the death of his ancestral grandmother, Fiona.   
  
At present, the nineteen year old was trying to relax, as he had been for several hours. He was still partially covered in a mixture of dirt, melting snow, ash and chips of dried, cold rock - how he was even _alive_ was so far past his own ability to comprehend that his mind automatically threatened to shut down everytime he even tried to think about it. All that he could really remember was the lava pooling up around his legs and then everything went pitch black until the moment where he finished literally _clawing_ his way out from his suffocating, darkened prison.   
  
His hands were still bleeding from the palms, knuckles and fingertips. They would probably have been bruised for a month if not for the efforts of Zeke, who was slowly, and impossibly beginning to heal them. How? That was also beyond Bit`s comprehension, but by that same token, it didn`t interest him enough to think about in the first place. His gloves lay in his lap, as did the Handleblade - still held in its holster. His legs were crossed below the knees and his head was sagging back, practically sinking into the currently-pulled back cockpit seat of the Liger Zero, as if it was in the Jaeger setup.   
  
_ Feeling any better?   
  
_ "Not really," he half-mumbled, half-choked out. His voice was hoarse, apparently from screaming during his black out. "Could use a bite to _eat_ right now... Or maybe a fucking _bath_," he added in a blithe afterthought, turning to look forward. Madison and Roc were still standing in front of the Liger, the larger of the two literally towering over the woman in front of it, not to mention the Liger and virtually all of the immediate, surrounding landscape.   
  
"What the hell are those two, anyway?" Bit asked in another half-mumble, shifting a bit and getting comfortable.   
  
_ Guardians. Just like we`ll be, at some point.   
  
_ "No, I meant... What the hell _are_ they?"   
  
_ Clinically insane?   
  
_** I heard that.   
  
** The cockpit jerked slightly, Bit supressed the urge to snicker and Zeke quickly saved face by muttering an apology in Organoidian. Madison remained impassive though, standing out in the frigidly hot, ashen snow of Hell on the mortal plane, virtually uneffected in any way other than having to squint slightly, not to mention the way the ash and snow were starting to cover her even more than it usually did. Ice sickles were hanging out of the woman`s hair.   
  
Leena would`ve probably had a heart attack from the damage the environment could do to her appearance, at least she would have before Kale had scarred the snot out of her.   
  
Madison didn`t even care. She just stood there, staring off into nowhere.   
  
Nowhere was that city in the distance, the one that the out-of-place transit tunnel lead to. There was _still_ an almost vampiric, crimson glow coming from the center of it, but Bit had given up on trying to get much of a look at the place. Roc seemed possessed against the idea of any of them even going within a mile of it.   
  
And speaking of Roc...   
  
** Get as an hour of sleep and then take the long way towards the Dome**, the Ancient ordered with the stern tone of a teacher. **It is almost time for your next test.**   
  
"... For _fuck`s sake_, you people are worse than my Science teacher in High School! How many god damned pop quizzes do you assholes have?!"   
  
_ Show respect or else I`ll eject you. _  
  
"... Oh like _you_ aren`t annoyed too?!" Bit demanded, promptly causing Zeke to shut up. Roc was unmoved, though he did provide a relatively fair answer in reply.   
  
** As many as it takes. That is all that you need to know. For now.   
  
** "... Why me?" The blonde grumbled out, hanging his head in a mixture of exhaustion, annoyance and flat-out contempt for the other two, a contempt that was slowly growing into full-blown hatred. Not hatred like what he had for Kale, but hatred like he had for his old Science teacher.   
  
In a sense, Madison and Roc _were_ teachers.   
  
They were just the teachers from _Hell_.   
  
  
Mary Sandler. Age twenty-seven, Helic born, neutral immigrant. Light brown hair, tall for a woman, somewhat underdeveloped at the hips and chest, cold blue eyes and a natural posture of self-assured confidence and independence that could make a typical feminist die in envy within a matter of seconds. She wasn`t exactly the prettiest girl on the block when she had been growing up, nor was she now, but by that same token, none of the other girls on the block had learned how to fire a hunting rifle by the age of six. They were all too busy playing with Barbie Dolls, Mary was busy beating the local boys over the head with a wiffle bat and shooting them with a BB gun.   
  
She was as lacking in her figure as she was in her morals. This woman would kill anyone for the right price, even her own parents, and she wouldn`t blink once while doing it. Her talent for hitting impossible targets had been what had given her the nickname of Sureshot, and that was a nickname she strived to keep at every chance.   
  
At present, Mary Sandler was clad in the garb of a pilot`s jumpsuit, the dark green outfit clinging to her lanky, man-sized body like a second skin as she sat in the retracting flight chair of the Geno Sniper. Her white, red-striped helmet sat as dead weight in her lap, the straps of the chair had been fastened into place and her expression was one of absolute relaxation, a half-empty styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand, the other flittering around instinctively over the keyboard. Like the cockpit of the now-destroyed Proto Breaker, the cockpit of the quite-intact Geno Sniper had been tailored to her preferences, closely resembling the setup of her old Snipe Master, at least in how the controls had been laid out. There were a few additions, here and there, like the lack of a cupholder and the lack of a holographic generator like the type found on Helcats, but it was still essentially the same.   
  
"All prepped for launch?" Asked a voice from the forward console, just as the chair finished its ascent into the actual cockpit and locked into place, the armored chest panel slamming shut with a clang of metal as the rail drew back up into the stomach. Mary identified it as one of the mechanics, a relatively nice guy by the name of Ed.   
  
"Yeah, and I`m holding you to your word about paying for dinner when I get back," she stated with an unusually out-of-place smirk, reaching up and popping open a miniature console before adjusting the surround sound volume, fixing the brightness and adjusting her targeting systems through it, only to slap it shut again before gulping down what remained of her coffee and dropping the cup carelessly into the floor.   
  
Hey, even amoral, mercenary super bitches had to have _something_ fun going on in their lives, right?   
  
"Understood. Shall I bering ze chompaign?" He asked with a false French accent.   
  
"Just bring a bullet so I can shoot you if you talk like that," she replied with an actual smile. "Entering radio silence once I exit the Dome," she added, flipping her communications over to recieve-only, then picking her helmet out of her lap and putting it on, though she chose to leave the visor up.   
  
The howl of the winds outside was diminished, but not entirely, once the floor began to lower down, revealing the section that the Geno Sniper was placed on to be an elevator of sorts, gently extending to the snow and ash choked volcanic dirt beneath the immense structure of the Dome, which itself was held up on eight _massive_ leg-like superstructures, each of which could easily move around in case of geological upheaval, and each of which had a built in shield generator to deal with errant lava flows. All eight tended to glow pink due to this fact.   
  
The Dome itself was probably one of the largest Zoid-type things ever created, closely resembling the body of a giant snapping turtle with the head drawn in or removed, while the legs bore more of a resemblance to those of a sauropod dinosaur in positioning and shape, and it lacked any sort of tail, though if not for the tons of ash and snow clinging in futility to it`s topside, it would also maintain a stronger resemblance to a turtle shell thanks to the massive panels in place there.   
  
_ "All systems green,"_ she read from the small monitor on the right side of the cockpit, just beneath the main viewscreen to that direction, placing her hands to the Liger-like dual joystick controls and her feet onto the pedals. _"Open season on blondes, ugly mechanical cats and my next paycheck."_   
  
With that, the enormous, white-and-gray camouflaged Zoid soundlessly padded its way off the exit strip and onto the snow, its boosters igniting a few seconds later.   
  
  
A groan and a somewhat painful breath sounded the alarm to someone or something, the world at large was a blur that mixed familiarity with things that were new, or at least seemed that way thinks to the number that had been done on his vision. Certain colors couldn`t be fully processed, shades of gray dominated his sight for a number of moments before he tiredly reached a hand up and rubbed it over his eyes, realizing that he had suddenly gained a few new items of clothing and was currently laying on a sheet spread out on the ground, with his head on a pillow.   
  
"`Bout time you woke up," came the cryptic comment from a husky, familiar voice. It had been the same voice that Brad Hunter had hoped he probably wouldn`t have to hear in these conditions ever again. "Am I the only one getting a sense of deja vu here?" The voice asked, and Brad slowly fought his way up from where he`d been sprawled out on the sheet, looking over to his right to find an unfamiliar green-and-gray Gustav, the cockpit shut. It was situated in an eerily familiar clearing, one that the former mercenary recognized from years earlier, instinctively knowing that this clearing couldn`t be reached without a trip down a dirt road and over a shallow ditch used by an old farmer to help divert water from a specific river and use it to help irrigate part of his fields.   
  
"Fuck," the shaggy haired pilot muttered out in recognition, holding a hand up to his bandaged-over stomach and wincing at the sight of another familiar object that only furthered to convince him that his supicions were correct.   
  
Said-object was the green eyed, black-and-red Lightning Saix that was the trademark of a man that Brad Hunter hadn`t been on close terms with in years.   
  
"Finally recognize home, huh? Bart," Jack Sisco commented from the camp fire settled to Brad`s other side, just ten or so feet away. It was early in the afternoon, the former mercenary reasoned, so Jack must have stopped for lunch or something, as evidenced by the skillet currently suspended over the fire. The other roady wasn`t wearing his jacket, for whatever reason, instead favoring his more casual get-up for the time being. That ugly green t-shirt, brown slacks, boots and a black leather belt, not to mention his bandana.   
  
That ugly, green-checkered bandana with the two weighted sticks hanging out of the back. Brad _hated_ that bandana. With a _passion_.   
  
"Still hidin` the stripes, huh?" He asked, supressing the urge to try and rip the band right off of Jack`s head and beat him with it. "John," he added as an afterthought while slowly hauling himself off of one sheet and from beneath the one that had been spread over him. He was relieved to find that even if the other roady hadn`t bothered putting his shirt back on while he was out, he was at least wearing his pants still.   
  
"Johnathan Sebastian is dead," came the semi-numbed reply. "I`m Jack Sisco."   
  
"Then you`ll be glad to know that Brad Hunter isn`t," the other former mercenary commented, stumbling over to the campfire and plopping down with an uneased feeling coursing through him. He and Jack Sisco went back a _long way_. "Least I`m still using my birth name."   
  
"I don`t have a birth name, remember?" Jack replied, having long since forsaken the name he`d had a child. "And your shirt`s in the Gustav, had to get it outta the way to tape your ribs and back up," he tossed in as an afterthought. Brad nodded without another word spoken, causing an unnatural quiet that stayed in place for a few minutes before being broken again.   
  
"Talk about the mother of all coincidences... Where are your partners?" Hunter asked calmly, not exactly sure where to begin catching up. It had been years since the two had last had a private conversation after all, even the ties of a gang could wear away pretty quickly.   
  
"Chris went to check on their dad, Kel went to check on their mom. They`re in different cities. How about you?" Jack asked smoothly in response, staring at the fire in that way he always did when he was relaxed.   
  
"Bit`s M.I.A., possibly dead, Leena`s with her dad and I don`t have a freakin` clue _where_ the hell Jamie is," Brad answered without missing a beat, cutting the small talk a few seconds later. "Odd that we`d both end up near our home town, eh?"   
  
"`Bout damn time you cracked," Jack asked with a friendly smile that only three other people had been privy to in the past few years. After that, he reached over to his right arm and pulled the sleeve up, revealing the same stripes on it as there were on Brad`s arms. "Once a roady, always a roady," he added.   
  
"Heh... Last time I went by _that_, I lost the Shadow Fox," the other replied, no longer really regretting the loss of his old Zoid. "Guy wasn`t even a real roady, either."   
  
"So I heard. Some `Staver punk who must`ve picked up the code by ear," Sisco commented, obviously referencing one Marcus Harlock in the process. "So... What`re you doing out here?"   
  
"Don`t believe I could say I was takin` a swim, could I?" Brad asked, still holding a hand to his stomach before leaning forward with his other elbow in his lap, both legs curled indian style beneath him. Jack shook his head with a rarely sardonic expression, a bit awkward since his bandana covered all of his forehead, and for good reason. That ugly, diamond-checkered bandana hid the still-fading, oversized, cross-shaped scar that covered much of Jack Sisco`s forehead, the result of a gang dispute in his early teens.   
  
"Jamie went after his girlfriend, I went after Jamie to keep an eye on `im, _we_ got captured, spent I don`t know how long as prisoners, then all Hell broke loose and I managed to get out," Brad explained, his own forehead partially covered by the bandaging wrapped around it. "You?"   
  
"I was heading back here to make sure the old dump was still intact in the first place, but..."   
  
"This is the part where I`m supposed to feign disbelief, huh?"   
  
Jack nodded before continuing. "Seems the town`s been taken over and booby trapped. Don`t know how many sleeper units they`ve set around it, but I _do_ know that there are too many for me to take out without them managing to _off_ everyone in town. They`ve got the kids packed like sardines in the second floor of the church, and the adults crammed into the basement catacombs where Danny and the rest of the boys used to hide out," he explained with obvious frustration, not even paying attention to the change that snapped across his old brother-in-arms` face.   
  
If it had been any other church, there was a genuine likelihood that neither of the two would`ve even cared. Human life was expendable in more cases than either typically wanted to think about, but that church was _their_ church. Both had grown up in the orphanage that the church provided, both had looked up to the local minister as if he were a father and both had practically adopted the local workers there as family, and even if that had all been over a decade ago, both still felt _strongly_ about it.   
  
Strong enough that both had been sending donations through the mail for years.   
  
"I may not be up to par right now b-" "My gun`s in the `Stav, think you can get in on foot and knock out the guys in and around the church?" Jack asked, having been anticipating what Brad was going to say for a while now.   
  
"Can you deal with the Sleepers?" Brad asked in reply, not even _needing_ to answer the question that had been thrown at him. Jack was more or less similar in attitude.   
  
"When`s the right time to start the attack?" He asked his once-again comrade, the fire that burned before them now reflecting dangerously in _both_ of their eyes.   
  
  
An ancient machine, conveniently unnoticed by the likes of the most modern defense systems that money could buy, stirred for the first time in almost two days, the warrior`s spirit that had been programmed into it so long ago clashing briefly with the surge of logic, rational thought to follow. Planning formed from there, and as the basis of that plan came numerical prophecy. Things were easy to predict, the larger the group, the more predictable it became, and Champton had just taken in a well-predicted influx into its population.   
  
It had become even more predictable as a result. Numerical prophecy lead further on, perfectly and accurately gauging and anticipating defenses that hadn`t even been seen in action yet, and numerical prophecy had even taken a perfect role in allowing the old beast to sneak in so perfectly undetected that passing aerial patrols hadn`t even noticed it at least than a hundred feet overhead.   
  
Numerical prophecy had aided it so much thus far, but playing in with that prophecy were countless other abilities, both mental - it was _beyond_ regular sentience - and physical - it bore an arsenal of weapons and tricks that were hard to match even after over two hundred years of technological development.   
  
Defense scanners were analyzed through mental simulations, thoughts of the defenders themselves were anticipated so perfectly that it was almost like a telepathic instinct guiding the creature as it began to bend down and gain leverage for a precisely calculated jump, one that would carry it right into a gap between the ground and air radars of the fortress. A course had been plotted through the city at large, the target and the back-up were both anticipated and without even a nanosecond to spare, the old Zoid shot from the ground, revealing itself to plain sight without so much as a single roar or growl, heaving through the air with more agility than anything of comparable size could ever even dream of.   
  
Even now, the grandest work of Thomas Richard Schubaltz was undeniably _still_ ahead of its time.   
  
  
An annoying beep summoned Leena Tauros out of an incredibly light nap, her fingers unraveling from the bird-like hair of the snoring Harry Champ and her closest hand swiping the communicator off the floor with an annoyed expression on her face. It took her all of a fraction of a second to switch form the eerily nurturing expression she had been wearing in her sleep to the maniacally homicidal expression that haunted Bit Cloud`s nightmares every few weeks, made all the more imposing by the scars that were probably going to permanently mar her face since most plastic surgeons had conveniently gone out of business when the world ended.   
  
One tap of the button on the side, Harry`s sleeping form shifted slightly, his head still situated heavily on the pillow placed into the bubblegum pink haired girl`s lap and his arm slipping beneath one of her legs as if to hold the pillow itself in place. If she had been in any sane state of mind, she probably would`ve instantly gotten goosebumps as a result - Harry Champ was actually quite handsome when he was asleep. And not talking. And not wearing platform shoes and a brown duster with dangly ribbons on the sleeves...   
  
"Harry?! You there?!" Came the equally annoying, familiar and somewhat loud voice of the S-5A Bot known as Sebastian, the shorter of the self-proclaimed Prince`s assistants.   
  
"Harry. Is. _Sleeping_," Leena replied with the same murderous voice that had driven Brad Hunter to want to rip his ears off on more than one occasion. "_Leave_. A. _Message_."   
  
"IwouldifIcouldbutIcan`trightnow! We`ve got _trouble_!" Sebastian almost yelped back, obviously frantic.   
  
"... What kind of trouble?" She asked, sounding a bit less crazed and a bit more rational. A bit.   
  
"The kind that begins with a capital T and gets followed with a-" The door practically _blew_ open, revealing one frantic looking Benjamin, who skittered in with a loud series of the sounds that came whenever the two bots were moving around, causing Harry to snap awake with eyes that were only _partially_ bloodshot by now.   
  
"We`re screwed if we don`t get to a safer place! Now!" The robot screeched with the same frantic tone that was obvious in its stance, just as Harry Champ slowly started to sit up on his side, his expression fading from surprised unrest to outright discontent. He had been rather _enjoying_ the prospect of uninterrupted sleep.   
  
"What do you mean?" He asked, before Leena or Sebastian could say anything further.   
  
"Some... _Zoid_ is coming fast, headed right for the Westerson Cafe! Nothing we`re throwing at it can even touch the freaking thing!"   
  
  
A Command Wolf screeched and toppled over, its right legs both knocked out at the elbow and knee stabilizers so perfectly that the joints popped loose without an inkling of damage to more than already expendable wiring. A Heldigunner followed suit moments later, also taken out with the precision of a high speed surgical knife, a blunted hand shooting out on a Genoesque cable and literally plowing through the hip of one leg, leaving the Zoid to drag to a stop. Thrusters activated again, a Gojulas` supercannons devestated the area that the assailant had been standing in, but the would-be savior was no match for the speed of its foe.   
  
The Gojulas was knocked over with a single swipe of an elongated, thick tail, no longer used for balance, but combat. The blow had been so perfectly executed that there wasn`t so much as a dent outside of the impact point, even on the side of the huge Zoid that was now sprawled out on the ground. It was an eerie sight to behold, one made all the more so, in the eyes of one Leon Tauros, because the attacking Zoid was so similar to the one it had just knocked out.   
  
_ "How the hell is a Gojulas moving like that?"_ He thought to himself, drowsily gripping the controls of the Red Blade Liger as if they were a lifeline. What made it all the more strange was how precisely and quickly this giant of a Zoid was literally punching straight through defensive lines that could`ve held back anything short of a modern day army without even being touched by gunfire or blades.   
  
The Zoid itself was fast, impossibly so for an ordinary Gojulas, decked out with a desert camouflage paint scheme and frequently shifting from an upright stance to one that closely resembled a Geno Saurer, the latter revealing the thruster pack situated between the two massive, supercannon-like weapons on its back. The Blade Liger growled something out, the Gojulas took notice, springing upright and consequently dodging a stream of machine gunfire with perfect impunity.   
  
For an instant, time seemed frozen, and then the larger Zoid burst forward, as if it had found exactly what it was looking for. Reflexively, Leon threw his blasters forward and opened fire, sending two three-shot pulses towards his attacker, only to watch it skid to the side on hot, fire-white hoverskate units, the cannons on its back shifting to point straight forward as it continued the approach at near-Shield Liger-like speeds.   
  
** [**_"No... Not you..."_**]**   
  
The Liger growled again, and suddenly, the blasters stopped firing and the blades flipped back. At the same time, every single Zoid on the battlefield stopped firing, control systems shut down and the Zoids themselves took control, leveling their weaponry right onto the head of the assailant with more precision than their pilots could ever even dream of having, in most cases anyway.   
  
The Gojulas slowed to a stop, barely the length of two Geno Saurers from the Red Blade, its cannons pointing upright and its admittedly short, blocky looking arms falling to some sort of neutral point. It stood upright, but still slouched forward somewhat, and the wear of age had faded its formerly perfect desert paint scheme, while its bulked up, lengthened tail straightened out almost rigidly as if to provide counterbalance.   
  
** [**_"... Just... Just stay away!"_**]**   
  
The Gojulas bore a number of thick, heavy looking armor panels, no doubt added during its creation. Multiple stabilizer caps were visible on the outer side of each thigh, six in all, with two in similar alignments on the out side of each shin, and another three positioned on the outer side of each foot. Every single joint in the arms also possessed a larger-than-usual stabilizer cap, bar the fingers, which looked as if the Gojulas had been given multiple fingered boxing gloves, with thick armored panels on the exposed side of each finger, the hands themselves having been dramatically strengthened, enough that it could rip limbs off of most other Zoids with ease, or pulverize them.   
  
Three stabilizer caps along each cheek, just behind the start of a sharply toothed jaw, with a pair of double, light pulse guns to either side. Vectoring, turreting triple thrusters were on the out side of each lower leg, and hoverstake thrusters were no doubt in position on the soles of either foot, while Geno Saurer-like ankle locks rested undeployed on the back of each ankle. The two cannons upon its back were noticably different from an ordinary Gojulas, they were longer, each one bearing for narrow fins extending in a cross, with each one situated just ahead of the base of the barrel and stretching out to a few feet ahead of its thickened tip, while the main part of the guns themselves were visibly bulkier and smoother than those of a supercannon.   
  
Lastly, the tail was thickened considerably, and lengthened as well, the tip of it taken up by a thickly armored, narrowing club that could easily crush through armor with no trouble at all.   
  
** [**_"... No. **No**!"_**]**   
  
This thing hadn`t been built as a mere improvement to the Gojulas design. Even at its basic appearance, it looked as though it could stand toe to toe with a Geno Saurer on _better_ than even ground. It fought like it could take one on, too, if not a _Breaker_.   
  
"_What is_ that thing?" Leon asked, temporarily distracted from the fact that his Zoid wasn`t responding.   
  
The Gojulas took a step forward, rattling the ground for a split second and leaving the Blade Liger to roar out something defiantly.   
  
** [**_"**GET AWAY FROM ME!!!**"_**]**   
  
A growl echoed, even over the Liger`s roar, and a twin glow of gold echoed from the Gojulas` mouth, before it launched off again, almost looking as if it had been slapped in the face. In response, Leon tried to will the Liger to turn around, but the Zoid failed to respond at all, staring ahead as if it had just won some utterly pointless, hollow victory, even while the rest of the Zoids on the battlefield stood down, those in the air landing and those below ground revealing themselves, their pilots unable to even open the cockpits.   
  
"**_CAN`T ANYONE STOP THAT THING?!_**"   
  
Leon`s question went unanswered. The Gojulas touched down on a cushion of super pressurized flame, just past Champton city limits, before blazing down the street towards the fortress, completely unscathed by every attack from the defensive guns, all of which were the lighter machine guns, gattlings and pulse cannons. No one in the base was willing to risk more than that.   
  
Concrete slagged beneath its ancient feet, the Gojulas slid onward, activating the thruster on its back and again launching through the air with impossible speed for something of its size, ascending over the outer wall of the fortress and then passing back down through the air, again landing on the cushion of super pressurized thrusterfire from its feet, the paved, steel-covered ground beneath suddenly turning hot, burning red as the Zoid practically blew through the ranks of deactivated defense Zoids like a harmless tornado, not opening fire, not bothering to dodge, not doing anything.   
  
It was as if the local Zoids had completely relented and given up against an opponent that none of them wanted to fight. Why and how were questions that nobody could give an answer to.   
  
Prediction set in again, likelihoods were calculated, options weighed and the choice made in a matter of nanoseconds, leaving the Gojulas to come skidding to a dead stop, footlocks briefly deployed in the process, before crashing into the wall of the single tallest building in the fortress, the head lunging forward at the last second.   
  
Titanium-reinforced concrete cracked and shattered like an eggshell, and within an instant, the cockpit flew open, leaving the fear-paralyzed Harry Champ and Benjamin to both fly off of their feet in shock by the time they even finished screaming out, every single piece of debris completely flying clear of the two without even the slightest chance of hitting them.   
  
And then the briefly visible cockpit chair`s arm panels flipped open to either side, revealing keyboards and monitors that promptly snapped open and shattered to pieces, Organoid-like cables streaking out through the air and snatching the target that the Gojulas had been after all along.   
  
Leena Tauros gave off a surprised, horrified shriek, leaving her feet with no less than nine or ten cables wrapped around her like ropes and pulling her off of her feet in mid-step. By the time that Harry could finish sliding off of the wall that he had flown into, another cable had smacked him across the side of the head and sent him flying down the hall, only to land with a newly bleeding bruise from where it had nailed him.   
  
"**_HARRY!!!_**" Leena screamed, instantly being yanked into the flight chair as the cockpit slammed shut, providing only the parting view of a plug-covered helmet snapping down over her head in the process.   
  
The Gojulas pulled out, skating backwards before turning around and executing another thruster jump, leaving Naomi Fluegel to yell curses at her frozen command system and the newly-disembarking Steven Tauros, Leyon Martin and Sarah Obscura to watch in puzzled, uninformed awe at the sight of such a large Zoid literally blazing over the walls and back into the civilian area of the city, leaving as swiftly and forcefully as it had first come.   
  
  
"How much longer?" Vega asked tiredly, walking onto the bridge of the Foe Hammer with an expression that echoed his voice. A cup of fresh coffee was in each hand, the larger of which was promptly offered up to the young man sitting idly at the helm, one leg curled up beneath him, the other hanging partially off the arm of the chair. Lars Torson wasn`t exactly known for his discipline, or for his attention span. He was the kind of guy who typically had himself buried in whatever held interest for him, his minute circle of friends was proof enough of that.   
  
"I don`t know. Anywhere from one day to two, if we keep at the speed we`re going," he answered, his head propped up on one fist and his eyes sagging partially shut before he grabbed the cup and took a sip. "Especially if Nyx`s weather is as bad as you say it is..."   
  
"It is. We`ll probably have to hold off on landing for more than a few minutes at most, especially with how bad the geology is there," Vega replied, his eyes suddenly taking that distant look to them that they kept gaining from time to time. Lars was unnoticing, he`d gotten used to the idea that he was hanging out with a child prodigy who could concievably look anywhere in the world and keep tabs on anyone he wanted with terrifying ease.   
  
Suffice to say, he`d been more than a bit paranoid about taking a shower or using the bathroom.   
  
Vega returned to normal all over again, plopping down in the captain`s chair for no other reason than it being empty and comfortable.   
  
"Don`t suppose you could turn on the radio or something..."   
  
"I tried that already," Torson replied drearily. "Every station`s been shot to nothing but chatter thanks to how many people are trying to relay messages on them. How`s Dana?" He asked with a bit of concern for the older woman, taking another sip of coffee and looking over at his datapad with want. The only reason he wasn`t playing a game or music right now was because Vega wanted to be sure he was paying attention to the controls.   
  
"She and her family are together - out of the way of any attacks."   
  
"And Kat?" He asked again, this time bearing a bit more emotion than he had for Dana. It was obvious, in Vega`s mind anyway, that the hapless nerd had a crush on her, which was made somewhat unfortunate because of Kat`s choice in lovers. Nerds couldn`t exactly compete with guys like Kyle Mazemia, especially not socially withdrawn nerds who didn`t have a record for bravery in Zoid battles.   
  
"She`s finishing taking a shower," Vega replied smoothly, the distant look in his eyes in play this time. He had probably checked on her a few seconds earlier. "With her boyfriend," he tossed in idly, promptly crushing the temporarily perverted and slightly hopeful look on his partner`s face. "Might as well set your sights elsewhere," he added, taking another sip of his own coffee. Lars blinked.   
  
"Yes. It`s that obvious," Vega cut him off. Again, Lars blinked before letting out a cough and changing the subject.   
  
"How`s your friend?" He asked, no even bothering to pause to come up with something to call Specular. As far as Lars was concerned, if it was some_thing_ that the kid honestly regarded as a family member or a dear friend, it was some_one_ worth giving the dignities he typically gave to human beings. It wasn`t much, but it was the least he could do.   
  
"Still resting. She probably won`t even wake up until we get to Nyx," the younger of the two replied. "Feels kinda weird though... I don`t hear her like I used to, but instead I`m hearing millions of voices at once, all of them operating specifically by how I want them to, all of them doing whatever I tell them to and only giving me the images and reports that I want or they think are important to me..." He added, those dark brown eyes seeming distant again, but not the way they had been before. It was more a distance of thought than anything else.   
  
"... Don`t suppose you could peek into any girls` locker rooms, could you?" Lars asked dismissively.   
  
"... Been there, done that, jacked the MP3, got sued for copyright infringement by the RIAA," Vega answered a bit hesitantly before taking another sip of his coffee, leaving the other to sound off in acknowledgement and look back at the console in front of him without another word.   
  
  
Tremors.   
  
On planet Zi, tremors were rare in every place but Nyx, mainly since the world was in the midst of a peaceful cycle of its geology. Earthquakes were even rarer than simple tremors, happening once every fifty years on average, if that. They were so rare, people weren`t even taught about getting under tables, or standing in doorways and other such things, buildings were only ever proofed to outlast an Earthquake if the builders _knew_ the things were going to be around long enough for it. In five hundred years of human existence on Zi, there had been a total of twenty-three earthquakes, only one of which had ever been powerful enough to cause _major_ damage to a city.   
  
Today, there was a tremor rumbling through the city of Farentown, jolting Katherine Takahori a bit as she sat down on the couch of the living room in the upstairs apartment of the uncle of her boyfriend`s team mate, intent on having her usual after-shower smoke. The old cancer stick was already in hand, she was fumbling for her lighter and then everything started to rumble slightly. Normally, she would`ve just passed this off as an errant shockwave from an explosion, it certainly didn`t seem that out of place anymore, but the lack of a precursing blast placed doubt in her about that.   
  
Kyle stood behind her with one hand on the back of the couch, the other holding onto the towel currently draped around his neck. His hair was still drying, and he was in a partial state of undress since he had yet to get his overalls back on. Unlike his clinically insane team mate, Kyle`s girlfriend hadn`t been around to do something as kindly as bringing in the sack he kept his clothing in when he wasn`t at home, whereas Abbie had done that for Mark at some point during he and Kyle`s time on 'guard duty.'   
  
As a result, Kyle was standing there in a sleeveless white shirt and boxers. Unlike Mark, who tended to wear boxers that were black with white stripes down the side, Kyle tended to wear boxers that were white.   
  
With heart patterns.   
  
_Pink_. Heart patterns.   
  
With cute arrows running through them.   
  
_ Obviously_, Kyle Mazemia _wasn`t_ compensating for something, chin be damned.   
  
"Don`t suppose you felt that too, did you?" He asked a bit blithely, his normally upbeat, easily excited attitude fading out to the sarcasm that had inexplicably been rubbed off on him by Mark and Harabec. "Or am I just going insane..."   
  
"Again."   
  
"Yeah. Again."   
  
"Nope, I felt it," Kat answered idly, reaching around and then digging through the seat cushions before finally finding and removing her lighter, promptly using it to ignite the tip of her cigarette. Her hair was still hanging down, she was also wearing nothing but her underwear and a shirt that she had... Borrowed from Harabec`s closet, so to speak. Unlike Kyle, she didn`t really have any issues with borrowing other people`s clothes if she was going to be a house guest.   
  
As a result, the brunette haired woman rarely got invited to stay over with too many people. She hadn`t even brought a change of clothes, and her jumpsuit was currently in the washing machine with Kyle`s clothing.   
  
"Guessing I`m not the only one getting a bit weirded out by all that`s been happening lately, am I?" She asked, craning her head back to look up at her boyfriend, who was in the midst of stepping around the couch and making good to sit down next to her.   
  
"... `Fraid so."   
  
"... Why`s that?"   
  
"... I hang out with two dangerous psychopaths and a living legend. _Nothing_ weirds me out anymore," Kyle answered sardonically, leaning back and getting comfortable as the pair waited for their clothing to finish. "How`ve things been with you lately?" He asked, wanting to catch up on the time they had missed with each other. Sure, he could`ve done so in the shower but... Well...   
  
They`d been a bit _busy_ in the shower. Enough said.   
  
"Same old, same old. Dana`s back at home, Lars is... Lars, and Vega`s... I don`t know _what_ the hell happened to that kid," she explained with all of the reserve and elegance of a blind Orca. Katherine had never been a woman who drew explanations out, she was simple, straight to the point. It was a trait she _usually_ shared with her younger brother, Rayth. "How about you?"   
  
"... I already told you."   
  
"They`re _that_ simple to describe? For _you_?" She asked disbelievingly, her giving Kyle that sideways glance that could reduce him from valiant tournament warrior to groveling man-servant in an under a second. In this case though, it only served to make him shrug a bit before trying to explain with a bit more depth. Kyle Mazemia, after all, was almost the opposite of his girlfriend, at least when he got the chance for it. Complex and one who was more likely to circle around the point for an hour, like a shark, he just didn`t get the chance to show it too often.   
  
It was _very_ difficult to be serious around Marcus Harlock.   
  
"Let`s see now..."   
  
"Take your time, Shoujonen, we`ve got a while," she replied, throwing out her own insultingly cutesy pet name for him in the process. Coming from Mark, that would`ve been a _major_ insult. Coming from Kat? It caused his cheeks to flush slightly, red eyes sliding shut as he flopped his head back and she turned sideways on the couch, laying her legs in his lap and waiting with the cigarette in her mouth.   
  
"Do I have to be complimentary, or insulting?"   
  
"Whichever."   
  
"Life`s gone to Hell, you`re one of the only shining points I`ve got left. Mark is completely over the edge, his girlfriend`s an anchor to reality with a cutely torturous nature and his uncle makes me wanna shove my head in a blender. That good?" Kyle asked, running a hand over his girlfriend`s shins and leaving his other arm to dangle over the back of the couch.   
  
"It`ll do."   
  
"Hear from Stigma, lately?" He asked, curious as to how his seemingly older twin was fairing these days. Katherine was as impassive as she ever was to most people, except for Kyle.   
  
"Haven`t seen hide nor hair of the old bastard since we took Vega to Garnhelm."   
  
"Rayth?"   
  
"Nope. Haven`t heard of or from him, either."   
  
"Good freaking riddance," Kyle muttered out idnignantly. He had been friends with Rayth, once, it was how he had met Kat in the first place. After a while though, the younger Takahori had just gotten on his nerves, and from there, things had eventually gotten violent.   
  
Kyle and Kat were both ex-Backdraft members. Both had been failed candidates for the Five Kings program. Kyle was too much of a nice guy who wasn`t a latent telepath, Kat was only good with a Pteras and a monkey wrench. Kyle had been in by choice to try and gain skills as a Zoid pilot and get enough money to pay off his parents` debts, Kat was born to a mother who was a relative to a founding member of the Council and a father who had been an in-law to the Count`s son. To put it bluntly, they went back a _long_ way.   
  
Despite that history though, his comment still earned him a light, but annoyed knock in the stomach by one of Kat`s legs, leaving him to leer uneasily at her with one eye, the other still shut.   
  
"_Don`t_ talk about my baby brother like that, he didn`t know any better," she growled out.   
  
"He still tried to kill me."   
  
"... Oh, like your partner _hasn`t_?!"   
  
A pause. A loud sigh.   
  
"You win."   
  
"I _always_ win, dear," Katherine said with a smile, her cigarette dangling off of her bottom lip without a care in the world.   
  
  
Engines cut out, the thruster died down and clumsy-looking ground legs extended down, metallic feet grasping the dirt with each stride, wings flapping briefly to give a bit more life to the Zoid`s fading lift. It had been hours now, but it was still around mid-day to mid-afternoon, somewhere in there. The house was a fairly quaint looking place, a moisture farm situated a few country miles from the town of Iden Madria, situated on the border of the Helic Republic and the neutral zone that the Zoid Battle Commission held its games in.   
  
_ "Home again, home again..."_ The pilot of the newly landed Zoid thought to himself, the cockpit sliding open with a gasp of scentless air, giving him the chance to take in the sight of the area in colored detail. A familiar, beaten up looking Pteras stood off to the side of an extended driveway, originally it had belonged to Maria Hameros, back when she had been piloting. The Zoid paid no attention to its new visitors, staring endlessly off into the distance, wings tucked behind it, dirt and rust stains that wouldn`t come off playing havoc on a once well-maintained paint job.   
  
"Jiggidy-fucking-jig," he added aloud, undoing his safety harness and then standing up. The winds of the desert whipped at his short-kept, chocolate-colored hair, rustling it like the feathers on an eagle`s wing, but he paid it little mind. The area hadn`t changed much over the years, aside from the additions of more and more machines and buildings to house them. Moisture farming was one of the few assured ways to make a _good_ living in the desert, and Oscar and Maria Hameros had been among the first to take part in it when the industry had been born, striking into an underground river that was fed directly by the ocean, over five _hundred_ miles away.   
  
They were probably the richest family in the local countryside, the fancy, Spanish-styled house they lived in was proof enough of that. It was almost big enough to qualify as a small mansion, if not for the severe lack of greenery outside of the private garden.   
  
"Just as you remember it," Will commented, though Jamie didn`t respond. For Will, it was actually the first time he had ever been to his own parents` home, mainly since he hadn`t even been 'born' during the time Jamie had lived and visited here. He knew enough though, to think it alright that he park the Raynos in plain sight near the front year.   
  
"Let`s go meet the family, shall we?" He asked, promptly jumping over the side of the cockpit, which instantly slipped shut without a pilot to occupy it. For most people, a jump from that height would`ve meant broken legs at the best, for the Wild Eagle, it meant temporarily numbness in the soles of his feet. Nothing else.   
  
Landing in a crouch, the teen stood up with the slow, thoughtful motions of a war veteran, glancing around and taking in the scenery a bit better than he had been able to before. There was a familiar collection of dolls and toy Zoids scattered across the porch, familiar to Jamie, anyway. They obviously belonged to his younger sister, wherever _she_ was right now. His mother`s car wasn`t anywhere in sight and the door to the part of the garage she kept it in was still hanging open since she rarely remembered to put it back down after pulling out, that meant she and Linda were both probably off somewhere.   
  
Iden Madria was one of the only places on the planet that hadn`t been nailed down in some way by Rommel`s global ambush. There weren`t any up-to-date Zoids in the immediate area, bandits viewed the place as being too much of the wrong kind of wealth to pillage it and it was too out of the way and too defenseless to make a full scale assault practical, but also too out of the way for anything but shipping Gustavs, HoverCargoes, Whale Kings and other aerial Zoids to really get too without being overly supplied. It was self-sufficient in every way, power and food included.   
  
As such, while the rest of the world tried to avoid imploding, life just went on in Iden Madria and the area around it as if nothing had changed, bar the problems with phonelines, television and the internet.   
  
Tucking his hands into the pockets of his vest, the young man took several minutes to truly familiarize himself with the Hameros property, not with Jamie`s memories, but fresh ones of his own. It was disconcerting to have the realization that you`d lived somewhere for thirteen years, but this was also your first time being there, never having arrived or left to begin with.   
  
The house itself was three stories tall, along with a second garden on the roof, extending for about two city blocks in all directions, with the garage being a seperate structure altogether, joined to the house by a paved walkway. Everything looked as if it had been made of adobe, but that was only the external layers, while the hard wood floor of the porch was quite real.   
  
Real enough that it made a classic, cowboyesque thump with every step of the Wild Eagle`s boots. Several more seconds trickled by, then a gloved hand knocked at the door a few times and drew back into the pocket it had come from, leaving him to stand there.   
  
Waiting.   
  
Waiting to get into his own home no less.   
  
At least he`d _thought_ it was his own home, until the door flew open, initially showing him the smiling face of a man he thought was his father, promptly replaced by an irate expression and a shotgun, brought up and promptly shoved forward, the tip of the barrel obscuring the youngster`s right nostril in the process.   
  
"Gee, happy to see you too, Dad," Will grumbled out annoyedly. Oscar was utterly unmoved.   
  
"What the hell did you do to my _real_ son?" He asked angrily.   
  
"Jamie`s taking a nap. Put the gun down, I didn`t kill him or anything," the younger of the two said tiredly. "A lot happened last night and I`m _really_ just wanting a place to crash for a day or two, alright?"   
  
Hesitantly, the gun began to lower, and Oscar began to inch a step back. He`d always kept a shotgun by the door, just in case. There was also another mounted in each hallway, all three of which were fully loaded, as well as a magnum tucked into the dresser next to he and Maria`s bed. He may have had a preference for frontier living, but he wasn`t stupid enough to think that he would be left alone forever, _this_ was proof enough of _that_.   
  
"Can I?" Will asked again, ready to leave and head back to the Blitz Team base if this was the treatment he was in for.   
  
"... Can I see Jamie?" Oscar asked, having fully brought the gun down, though he didn`t trust this cursed secondary personality enough to put the weapon back in its place.   
  
"... When he`s better," Will replied glumly. "I wasn`t kiding when I said that a _lot_ happened last night. Can you point me to my... _His_ room?"   
  
A few seconds of pause, then the older man made a motion to the staircase. "Third floor, second door on the right," he said, stepping out of the way and keeping an eye on the limber youth, even as he made his way down the first hallway and up the first flight of stairs.   
  
  
"It`s settled then," Jack said with a hint of question to his voice, though it was still more of a statement than anything else. Brad only gave a nod and lowered the binoculars he had borrowed, passing them back to his old brother in arms and then putting his hands to his sides with a steeled look in those frigidly blue eyes. The two were standing atop the back-mounted guns of the Lightning Saix as casually as if it were the top of a set of monkey bars in elementary school.   
  
"Yeah. It`s settled. I`ll have to borrow your gun-" "Yours for the taking." "- but it`s still settled."   
  
A pause. Jack took a single look through the binoculars and inched his tongue into his cheek ever so slightly, having to use a finger to keep his bandana from weighing down on his eyebrows. Half the reason he ever wore the weighty looking sticks on the thing was because they usually served to keep it from sliding down over his eyes, keeping the weight relatively balanced.   
  
"We attack just before sunrise, with as much cohesion as we can manage," the slightly older man said, lowering the binoculars back down and taking a glance at his former gangmate. "You sure you`re really up for this, Brad?" He asked with true concern. The ties between roadies and orphanned blood brothers were too deep to fade in a few years, and even if they weren`t as close with each other as they had once been, they each still cared for each other as if they really _were_ family. Brad was still injured. _Badly_. There wasn`t any hiding that.   
  
"It`ll take more than some cracked ribs and a bruised head to stop me, Jack. You should know that by now."   
  
"Times change," the other shrugged. "People change with them," he added, turning back towards the direction of the town.   
  
"Our names changed, but we`re still the same," Brad shot back, though his words carried a much deeper meaning than most people would`ve read into them.   
  
In response, Jack only raised a fist, which was promptly smacked by Brad`s own in reply, the gesture repeated again before the two exchanged a near mirroring smirk.   
  
"May as well get to sleep early if we`re gonna stand a blue chance in Hell."   
  
"Blue chances in Hell are always the best," the younger of the two said, and meant it. "More interesting that way."   
  
"So much for throwing caution to the wind, eh?" Jack asked with a knowing smirk, still staring in the direction of the town. Even if it was a bit of a hassle to, they could see the lights shining in the distance, over the tops of the trees that only barely came up to their waists atop the Lightning Saix.   
  
"I _did_ throw caution to the wind," Brad replied with a pause. "It just hasn`t blown back in my face yet."   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty-Two

_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Sorry if parts of this read as rushed or what-have-you. I`m having a serious case of Author BahhhhhhhHHHH*snerkdroolfrothmehm3hbahbuhmuhDIE.* lately, so you`ll have to excuse me :P But even if it did suck(or didn`t, up to you), it **has** done what I wanted of it...  
  
Set the stage. Nuff said.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** "Faint?" I must not be working those two hard enough if you only detect it faintly :P I may not, and I sincerely **HOPE** that I`m never going to be a romance writer, but these things happen in this kind of situation(or something like it). People wake up to true feelings, some relationships fail, others become stronger. Suffice to say, I`ll be taking decent enough care of the majority of those who survive if the good guys win this.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Yeah, I should`ve described Rommel`s expression. All I can visualize is the Spock Eyebrow effect with a blink or two thrown in for emphasis >_>; And glad to know SOMEONE doesn`t think I`m goin` soft...  
  
**Illidan:** Glad Kale has so many fans... As for Brad, I`m going to be **TRYING** to make up for lost time in developing him a whole helluva lot more than I have so far, at least I will pretty soon anyway. I may even finally get around to the long overdue Brad, Naomi and Jack POVs I`ve been meaning to get to, but ya never know... And yeah, Harry`s growing up. He doesn`t have a choice in the matter and with Leena having just been kidnapped, things are only going to get harder on him. I`m actually liking the poor little bastard more and more everytime I write him... *Shrugs.* As for Jamie, only time will tell. And another thing: Rommel may assume a lot, but he`s just that damned good. Trust me, I`ll be proving it sooner or later. Just been having to keep the good guys alive till now, yanno?  
  
**Engar:** Gee, the sanity being sucked out of everyone? I`d neeeeever do something like thaaaat...  
  
*Snicker.* Champton`s not really a last-stand type of place, but it **is** the first safe haven that comes to a lot of people`s minds. Not so much as Farentown or Romeo, but if I had to rank it to them, it wouldn`t be that far behind. Bit will continue to be Bit. Maybe he`ll end up similar to Kale, maybe not, even **I** don`t know yet. As for him beating the crap out of Madison, he probably won`t, but you`ll just have to wait and see, now won`t you?  
  
That`s it for now folks. Hopefully I`ll be able to continue fleshing things out in detail, but I intend on leading you all on for a while longer.  
  
Expect the mindfucking to continue.  
  
Enjoy, leave a review and Sh33p out.  
  



	23. Truth of the Mistake

  
  
**Foreword:** "And all shall be revealed..."  
  
Orgy - Fiction(Dreams in Digital)  
Disturbed - Remember  
  
... And yeah, the dog sounds like Barry White or Isaac Hayes.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Truth of the Mistake   
  
  
  


"Where am I?"   
  
The question could`ve had numerous answers, but the most obvious, to the girl asking it at least, was also the most similar: In an infinitely white void. Aside from her, there was nothing to be seen. It was just _white_, in all directions. No obstacles, no details, no colors, just solid, uniform white. She couldn`t tell if she was floating, standing, upside down, right side up or sideways entirely, it seemed as if equilibrium had no place being here, and if even if it did, it wouldn`t have mattered.   
  
There were no sounds, it took her a while to realize that she wasn`t even breathing, and it took her longer to realize that even if there was no atmosphere, _she didn`t have to_. She couldn`t feel anything but her own skin and clothing, and even that felt different than it usually did because she wasn`t wearing the same, nerd-like outfit that she had been using for the past few weeks to hide all of the scars across her body. Instead, she wore white sneakers, matching socks and a pink dress that ran all the way down to just beneath the kneeline, a bit tight in some places, a bit loose in others.   
  
On top of that, her glasses were missing.   
  
As if _that_ wasn`t enough, her scars themselves were _gone_. She was almost, bar the clothing, back to her old self...   
  
"... What the hell is going on here?!" She asked a bit frantically, though she didn`t notice that there wasn`t even an echo. The area she was in was either that big, or that small, and she couldn`t tell which. Her other senses were dulled as well, she could only smell her own scent and she could only taste her own saliva.   
  
Needless to say, Leena Tauros had experienced vastly more interactive days in her lifetime.   
  
It was at about that time that the void suddenly began to change. It started with a few thin waves of black, then picked back up with numerous streaks and splashes of colors of all kinds, filling her vision in every way until finally, it all stopped.   
  
What she was left with was a perfect, empty copy of Rev`s Diner, on the evening after the Royal Cup. Banners were still up, the arcade games were running, the lights were on, food was laid out on every table, some of it partially eaten, all of it still hot or cold. Drinks were set near every plate but a few, and the pool table looked as if it had sat through a round of Brad, the Taskers, Pierce and Jack Sisco, the same with a table that had a half stacked deck of cards on one side and several other hands of cards lay on the other.   
  
There was even a dusty black baseball cap sitting on on the floor, just a few feet from the doorway.   
  
"... Okay, this is just freakin` me out, now," she grumbled, poking at the dress she wore and then shaking her head before heading for the door. _"May as well check and see if everything is like this... Hopefully I`ll find **someone** I can ask about this..."   
  
_ It took all of two seconds to get to the exit and unlock it, giving one hard yank and then leaving Leena Tauros to have to scrape her jaw off the sidewalk.   
  
The process of 'painting' the world was still going on, but there were blank spots. Places occupied only by white gaps in the world, ranging from a manhole into the sewer that hadn`t had its lid put into place yet, to a second floor window on the side of a building she had never gone into, one that hadn`t had the actual _window_ put in yet, not by whatever or whoever was doing this, at least.   
  
"This is _nuts_."   
  
At that, the sky shifted colors from being the equivelent to a puddle of mixed paints that hadn`t blended yet to being a spectacularly cloudless, star packed night sky. In addition, the 'gaps' seemed to finish filling in, rendering the world around her to a set appearance that was nothing but an empty, lifeless version of Farentown at night. Cars were everywhere, and after a few seconds, she realized that she was holding the keys to the Blitz Team`s jeep.   
  
Her hands had been empty less than a second before that realization. It was unnerving.   
  
"This... Must be some kinda dreamworld or something. I must be asleep..."   
  
She was wrong of course, but in her situation, it was a relatively acceptable mistake. It wasn`t every day that reality bent over backwards for you, after all.   
  
"If it`s some kind of dreamworld then... Maybe I dreamt up some people who could explain things to me..."   
  
Wrong again, but still trying. After several seconds of thinking, she promptly gave up. Reasoning through things had never been one of her strongpoints, but spotting the obvious was, and to her, this was _obviously_ some sort of false reality. How it was constructed, she didn`t know. How she was there, she didn`t know. How to escape though...   
  
"If this place is only filling in the parts of the world that I know... Then..."   
  
A few seconds went by and she turned sharply to the left, breaking out of her immobile stance and racing over to the Blitz Team jeep before swinging the door open and smacking the small pedal to the left of the accelerator down. At that, she dropped the keys and the hood popped open. Leena stood up and twisted around the door before peering under the metal plate that had formerly been covering the engine block.   
  
"Holy hell," she muttered out in an instant. She had been proven correct in a vague assumption that if the place had been created out of her memories, she would be unable to see the engine of the Blitz jeep because she had never looked under the hood to begin with. That meant that the world around her still had at least one gap of escape, and even if she had made many, _far_ better decisions in her lifetime, it was all she could think to do to climb up onto the fender and jump up over the gap.   
  
As a result, Leena found herself tumbling back into that solid white void, just like before.   
  
Only this time, there was equilibrium. It was as if the world suddenly regained its sense of direction, and the falling sensation set in many times over as a result. For a few seconds, she found herself wondering if she would`ve been better off spending however long it would`ve been in the empty trap of a memory, but instead, she found herself landing on both feet in the middle of another memory.   
  
This time, it wasn`t one of her own.   
  
Her clothing was still almost the same as it had been before, but now she had her usual, gravity defying hairclip back in place, even if her dress had changed again. Instead of just being pink, it was now a mixture of pink and red, fitting into the fashions of the late Chaotic Century era, just before Golden and Battle Centuries began. She also had on white wrist bands.   
  
The white void had changed in the instant she had touched down onto her feet with a grace and agility that she truly _did not_ possess, switching over to what looked like a gigantic room with an empty pit sitting towards one wall, large enough to house an upturned Whale King or a dozen HoverCargoes at once, even more if you stacked them on top of each other. It was slightly rusted, winds could be heard echoing from outside, even through what must have been fifty feet of armored roofing. Numerous dead, dying and warped Zoid Cores piled into the pit, which had a few wide puddles of inch deep liquid, the same kind often associated with modern-day Core maintenance units.   
  
"... _Whaaaat_ now?" The girl groaned out defeatedly, no longer sure if she even _could_ escape this time.   
  
"Oh! A visitor!"   
  
That did it.   
  
That _did_ it.   
  
By the end of the next split second, Leena had whipped around, _quite_ intent on breaking the sticks off of her hairclip and using them to strangle whoever had just popped up, but by the time she finished the spin, she had lost every ounce of maliciousness that she could conjure up, instead choosing to stare dumbfoundedly in a mixture of shock, awe and outright disbelief.   
  
He was roughly around Brad or Leon`s height, wearing a recognizably _older_ model of the Guylos Special Forces uniform, dating back to the late Chaotic to early Golden Centuries. A sleeveless, dark blue longjacket worn over a pilot`s flightsuit, running down to just above the knees, dark brown boots, leather gloves that went back to the middle of the forearm, along with an unrecognizable mantle of some sort, with a silver neckpiece that poked up from the collar to just in front of the chin.   
  
If the guy was a bit shorter and not so pencil necked, lacked the distinctive red tattoo under his left eye and had a more pointed jawline, he could`ve passed himself off as Bit. Even _with_ all of the changes, he _still_ could have passed himself off as Bit. He even had green eyes and blonde hair that tilted in the same direction as Bit`s did.   
  
"... Who the-" "... Why`re you dressed like Fiona?" The newcomer asked curiously, head cocked to the side with a vacantly unknowing expression on his face.   
  
At that, Leena finally went rigid, took on a completely unreadable expression and then fell over backwards, completely _passed_ out.   
  
"... Well, _that_ wasn`t a very good first impression, was it?" The fellow asked, idly walking over and tucking a hand into one pocket before poking at Leena`s side with a stick that appeared in his hand out of nowhere. "I know you didn`t faint, Miss. You might just wanna get up and let me explain things..."   
  
"Go away, ya freakin` history lesson nightmare," came the disoriented mumble from the floor. In response, he kept poking away at her side with the stick.   
  
"Look, I understand and respect if you`re a bit overwhelmed or anything, but laying there is just gonna get in my way. If you`re not gonna move, I`m just gonna have to work around you..."   
  
At that, she flew back up to her feet and all but leveled the poor sap with a backhanded smack, followed up by a typical slap, each of which moved so quickly that even if he _had_ been able to block them, he probably would`ve ended up punching himself in the process. Either way, the young man went airborn for several seconds and landed with a disgustingly fluid series of movements, arms and legs bending about and flailing as if made of rubber, face shifting to an expression that looked as if it had been taken right out of a cartoon. A small cloud of dust erupted from where he smacked into the ground, followed by a very _un_-Bit-like groan.   
  
If it were Bit, he would`ve just screamed like a sissy or something and tried to gimp away.   
  
This guy just stood up, stumbled backwards out of the dust cloud and literally pulled his head back into place before rubbing his apparently numb cheeks.   
  
"And I thought Raven was anti-social," he grumbled out annoyedly, calming down in an eerie way before sighing. "I`m guessing you`d either like to disembowel me or want me to introduce myself, right?"   
  
"I`ll take both," Leena answered, suddenly wielding what looked like an egg beater on steroids. In response, the man twitched before the entire world went solid white once again, the egg beater vanishing, the stick that had become lodged in the ceiling following suit and both of the two 'standing' in the midst of an endless void of nothing, bar each other.   
  
"My name is... Sort of is, anyway, Thomas Schubaltz," the fellow said professionally, and at that Leena again calmed from mild insanity to the mixture of awe and dumbfoundedness.   
  
"Thomas Schubaltz _died_ over two hundred years ago..."   
  
"I`m an imperfect copy," he replied plainly with a shrug, his clothing suddenly changing again to a slightly heavier, more ground soldier-like dark green trench coat, though it lacked sleeves like the previous longvest. Underneath it, she could tell that he was still wearing his same flight outfit, and the mantle hadn`t changed either, though the collarpiece was now less apparent and could be lifted off with the rest of the mantle itself.   
  
"An imperfect copy?" She asked disbelievingly.   
  
"Long story. Ties in to this whole... World-thing-whatever," he answered, just as the world in question flooded with more color until finally, it resembled the bedroom of thirteen year old, innumerable gadgets strewn about, ranging from an old tape player made out of an even older VCR to a primitive datapad crafted from a few calculators and a stolen PDA.   
  
The bed was about the same size as Leena`s own, there was a mostly-glass door leading out to a balcony overlooking a high class garden, which ran out to a ten foot high brick wall, bordering the garden with the forest around it, and the lake that was visible in the distance. Several second and third place awards in things like boyscouting were visible on the wall, along with dozens of first place awards in junior level computer science and other fields, even an image of a younger version of the man, aged to around six years old, standing next to a slightly older boy with a bulldog standing between them.   
  
"What _is_ this?" Leena asked, finally spouting off just about every question she could think of at once.   
  
"Me, the world, your clothes?"   
  
"**_EVERYTHING?!_**"   
  
A pause, and the man identified as Thomas thoughtfully plopped down into a chair at a computer desk that Leena either hadn`t noticed before or hadn`t been there before. "Well... I guess I can explain it pretty simply, unless you _want_ the long version..."   
  
"Simply."   
  
"Thought so," he shrugged. "Might wanna sit down though, this _is_ gonna take a while," he advised, and Leena did as he suggested without a word, though that murderous glint was starting to return to her eyes as she plopped down onto the bed. All the more reason, Thomas felt, to tell her what she wanted to know.   
  
"What we`re in now," he began, gesturing to the room at large. "Isn`t real. Not to you, at least, to me this _is_ a form of reality, but to you, this is virtual. In the physical world, you`re sitting in the cockpit of something called the Giga Gojulas, in a state that closely resembles a hypnotic trance," he explained, continuing before Leena had the chance to state her disbelief. "What we`re in is a sub-program created by something called Beke II, he-"   
  
The world shook briefly.   
  
"_It_," he corrected himself. "Is a combat computer system originally designed for the sole purpose of seeing through stealth systems, analyzing the movements and strategies of opponents, providing information on how to counter their tactics, stuff like that. At least that was the original intent, after an... Incident involving the real Thomas Schubaltz and a woman by the name of Riese, Beke I sort of underwent an upgrade."   
  
"Slow down."   
  
"What do I need to explain?" He asked, a bit less annoyedly than the real Thomas would have.   
  
"Incident with Riese?"   
  
"Ah... Riese was a telepath of enormous strength, about the only equal she had was Fiona Alysse Linette, I _think_ she might be one of your teammate`s great-great-great-great-great-great-_really great_ grandmothers, at least if Beke is as right as it thinks it is."   
  
"What did she do?" Leena asked curiously, shifing out of possibly homicidal maniac mode and back into a state that vaguely resembled normalcy, laying down on her side and propping her head up in one hand.   
  
"Mindwiped him. Hid every memory he had so deeply that the only things he could access were the memories required for language and his skills as a pilot and jack-of-all-trades with machines and computers. He didn`t even know his own name until a guy named Doctor Dee Phabes told him."   
  
Leena winced.   
  
"But he maintained his sense of duty, it was really all that was even giving him a purpose at the time. For a few weeks, he kept going and going as a Guardian Force member, unable to access even the slightest memory of his past. He pushed away his friends, buried himself in his work and tried to make it fill the void where his life used to be, but it eventually got to him. A chance encounter with a pilot by the name of Raven drove him over the edge after that, and to make up for the fact that he didn`t have a Zoid at the time, he joined the Guylos-Helic exchange program again. This time though, he got his hands on a Gojulas."   
  
A nod. He continued.   
  
"After that, he installed the remains of the Beke unit into it, and from there, things went on their own. He and Doctor D. tried to modify Beke in the hopes that it would give Thomas an added edge to make up for his lack of fighting skills compared to other pilots, like Van Fleiheit or Irvine. They modified it enough that what started out as a basic consciousness evolved on its own, overnight, into a fully sentient artificial intelligence, which in turn subverted the original programming of the Gojulas. On the initial test flight though, it- am I moving too fast for you?" He asked at her dumbfounded expression.   
  
"... You lost me at Beke. Keep going."   
  
"... Right. Anyway, on the initial test run of the newly dubbed Giga Gojulas, Beke II 'entered' Thomas` mind and tried to help him regain his memories, but not directly. You see, Beke II is sort of... A God Program, if you get my drift. What started out as a combat calculator with a limited ability to think evolved on its own, growing into a fully self-aware personality with the ability to read into every possibility in every way imaginable and then some, moving _past_ the realm of mere sentience and becoming 'self-aware' for everything around it, _especially_ its creator. It wanted Thomas to get his memories back, but it knew that if it helped him to do it directly, it would probably end up getting him killed. Even if it is a techno god, Beke is still just a machine. H-_It_, can`t truly interface with a human mind like a telepath can."   
  
"So, what happened after that?"   
  
"It manipulated and enhanced him him. First just a few images, loose clues, then that triggered him to try and keep piloting it even after the initial shock almost caused him braindeath from how Beke... Overclocked him, so to speak. On his own, he went out into the world again, this time with a _real_ purpose. Eventually though, it boiled down to a lot of close friends and family being injured in the process, and after he got his memories back, he made the choice that Beke knew he would."   
  
"And that was?"   
  
"He climbed in one last time, piloted out of the base it was being kept in and let it go. It copied his memories down as best it could at the time and then went off on his final order to leave and never be used by a military power to gain a totally unfair advantage."   
  
"And how do you figure into it all?"   
  
"I`m the result of Beke putting all those memories to use. Aside from a few gaps before he was four, and his life after Beke and the Giga left, I _am_ Thomas Schubaltz. As for the world around you, well..." He paused thoughtfully, giving a shrug. "Beke figured that even if it had me to protect - sort of - I needed something to do with my time. So it created a virtual sub-program that I could use to create my own world, operating first off of memories, then pure wants. If I want to relive something, I can do it here, same if I feel like rewriting something or living an experience out on my own."   
  
"And how do I figure into all of this?" Leena asked, causing the virtual Thomas to facefault in an instant before scratching the back of his neck.   
  
"Well... Beke figured that since I am Thomas, and I had a constant desire to help protect the world, it should carry out our wish. For the rest of his life, it looked out for the real Thomas from afar, tracking him by hacking into Riese`s Micro Sworder hivemind and hijacking a few insects, then when he died, it deactivated those and went into a state of thoughtful hybernation. Keeping that objective in mind, it used its abilities to predict and measure things accurately enough that it guessed that the whole... _Mess_ that you guys`ve got going on now would happen. It guessed so accurately that it was able to predict that there would be exactly two people whose fates were genuinely variable and could be interfered with by it without screwing up the rest of the predictions it had."   
  
A pause. And then came the part he had facefaulted about.   
  
"You were Plan B. Your older brother was the one that Beke was originally after. If not for the Red Blade Liger and _its_ connection to the real Thomas, you never would`ve been brought here."   
  
Much to his surprise, she was only curious, not homicidal.   
  
"How was I Plan B if both me and Leon could work?"   
  
"Leon was closer at the time, not to mention his brain chemistry was calculated as being a bit more similar to Thomas` than yours. He also didn`t have any significant others who might miss him," Thomas explained with a passing shrug, feeling a bit more comfortable now. "And there`s also the matter of your personalities... Beke felt that Leon would be more willing than you once the risks involved were made clear."   
  
Another brief pause as Leena sat back up and waited for an explanation. When he failed to provide one, she sighed and asked anyway.   
  
"What was the plan in the first place? What process are you talking about?"   
  
"The same process that Thomas went through, downgraded though. You see, what happened to Thomas was basically... He became exactly like Beke, to an extent. He was more than human, but less than the machine that made him that way."   
  
"I don`t understand," Leena pointed out with a glum look on her face.   
  
"He went past sentience, sort of. He became aware of others as well as himself, sort of like telepathy only... More powerful and not conscious at the same time. He could spot the weakness in Van Fleiheit`s knees just by looking at them, or pick up Doctor D.`s future lung condition just by hearing him breathe. Understand now?" Thomas asked, knowing that he would never be able to truly articulate what had happened to his true self in the process. Either way though, the explanation seemed to work.   
  
"And what`s so risky about that?"   
  
"It worked on Thomas because... Well, Thomas` memories were both hidden from him and protected at the same time. It doesn`t know what`ll happen with someone who has all of their personality still intact, Beke`s calculated only a 50/50 chance of it working on someone who has their memories intact, let alone someone who`s got slightly different brain chemistry than Thomas. And even with the original, it almost killed him..."   
  
"What`re the pay-offs then?" Leena asked, showing a streak of gutsiness that Thomas hadn`t anticipated. If Beke had, the machine god wasn`t saying a thing about it. Not yet, at least. True to the changes that were already taking effect in her, Leena Tauros had started becoming a more thoughtful person as of late, though the courage had been born of her single-handed fluke over the Triad Team. Put together, it was giving her a boost of actual _strength_ with the confidence and strong will that she already had, and added to a softening heart, that made for a potent combination.   
  
Leon wasn`t the only one who would`ve said yes.   
  
"A _far_ lesser extent of what Beke did to Thomas. I`m not sure if it would be the same though, only Beke knows what you`ll really be able to do and he isn`t telling me," Thomas explained with a dry tone, shifting a half-dangerous glance of an unfriendly bull dog that was standing outside of the room, visible just through the balcony. The thing was the size of the Liger Zero Panzer.   
  
"... _**EEP!!!**_" Leena yelped, promptly falling off the bed and crashing to the floor with the look of a cat that had just looked death in the face and lost, only to survive by an angry human yanking it up and flinging it over a fence by its tail.   
  
Thomas was utterly unphased.   
  
"Say hi to Beke. As you can see, it prefers taking the appearance of an overly protective bull dog that belonged to the real Thomas and his brother when he was a kid. Same name, too," he said as casually as if giving the weather, like nothing had happened at all. The dog named Beke II seemed to get even bigger, inching to the door and literally peeking an eye inside to try and find Leena.   
  
"Could you please tell him to not do that?! Dogs the size of houses and I usually don`t get along too well!" She yelled right back, trying in vain to get under the bed, which promptly seemed to hover up and out of her reach, lifting off of the floor and leaving her completely uncovered. With a mild twitch, she found herself back in her old flight costume. Pink, fitting like a combination of spandex and glossy leather, even the gloves. Her skin was still perfectly flawless, though she didn`t get the chance to notice this too well, looking up from the completely annoyed looking Schubaltz to the disembodied 'eye' of Beke, then looking up to watch as the mattress and support frame of the bed spread apart like a mouth opening wide, revealing white emptiness in the process.   
  
By the time her mind could finish comprehending this, the scenery had changed with the snapping shut of teeth, leaving her to fall aimlessly through the void again, temporarily losing all sense of balance and feeling before she found herself crashing through the roof of reality like glass, appearing in the same hangar as before and landing on her back side, completely unharmed. There wasn`t so much as a sign of her entry, and as she sat up, she realized that the scenery was warping again.   
  
A blur of color and movement and she was practically driven to her feet from nonexistent momentum, slapping into a wall after flashing through a reinforced steel door like it wasn`t even there. She hadn`t even moved herself in the process, the _world itself_ had moved around her instead, and it did so again, rotating until she was able to look down the hallway in time to hear and see the beginnings of a commotion.   
  
"I don`t _care_ how badly you think you need it, Thomas!" A slightly squeaky, but still heroic sounding voice yelled. "_I won`t let you go out intent on committing murder if you don`t get your way_!" It added, and the world blurred again until she was standing with a perfect, above ground view of the parts of this duel of words.   
  
On one end was... Thomas. His uniform was the same as the trench coat-styled outfit he had been wearing when she`d last seen him, but his eyes looked empty. Determined. Void of anything but a mission and a willingness to plow through anything and anyone in the way of it, though there looked to be a lingering agony, boiling just beneath the surface. Across from him stood two people, each bearing a passing resemblance to a certain team mate of hers, not quite the same as the one carried by Thomas, but still _quite_ strong.   
  
The man was short in stature, lending himself to a posture of constantly being the underdog. He had brown, almost black eyes, somewhat tanned skin and wore a uniform similar to a Helic special forces outfit without the armored undershirt, foolishly exposing a bare midriff and lower back in the process. He also had a rat tail and spikey brown hair, pulled tightly back, not to mention fingerless biker`s gloves and combat boots. The red stripe on his face clenched it, that man was-   
  
"Van Fleiheit... Then that must be-" "Fiona!"   
  
She was cut off by the same short man she had been glancing at. The woman in question looked utterly defenseless and on the verge of wanting to run away, though a steel-like resolve could be seen just barely shimmering beneath the outwardly vulnerable exterior she was portraying, as if fear had been possessing her to some extent for years, but she was closing in on the end of her rope at the same time.   
  
"Back away and keep out of his reach. With how he`s acting, I don`t want him lashing out at you," Van ordered firmly, getting into a fighting stance and reaching for something holstered at his back. Leena recognized it instantly as the same weapon that Bit had spent spit-shining on his second day back, with the same holster as well.   
  
Suddenly,_ everything_ added up.   
  
"Bit`s related to Van and Fiona?!" She yelped at last, only to be surprised again as a voice popped up from beside her.   
  
"And Thomas too, for that matter. It`d take too long to explain as more than an act of God and/or a fluke of nature, but you get the idea," a miniaturized version of the bulldog from earlier said with an eerily deep voice, rolling out like a gruff-but-smooth saxophone tune, carrying with it a deep amount of thought and emotion in the process. "But that isn`t the point here," he added as Leena looked down to where the little animal was hovering next to her with a completely _blanked_ expression.   
  
"Take a good look, Leena. If you agree, you _may_ end up something like this."   
  
The two had spoken a bit more, and then, like some sort of demonic, hell-driven dreadlord, Thomas lashed out, crossing the distance with an eerily quick, precise speed. The attack was just as swift, if not more so, and Van struggled to block it.   
  
"... I`m taking guidance from a fucking holographic, electronic god pit bull..." Leena muttered. The dog was completely impassive, watching the scene below with grave interest. Instantly, the world shifted again until Leena was doing the same, whether she wanted to or not.   
  
"Could this possibly get... _Any_ crazier?" She asked, more so to herself than to Beke, who just huffed something out too quickly for her to understand.   
  
By the time she finally shifted _all_ of her focus onto the violence taking place in the hangar, a scream _tore_ through her senses and left her with a feeling of disgust and horror, her jaw sagging open as Van Fleiheit fell to the floor, face first. Both legs had been broken at the knees, so viciously that his feet didn`t look as if they were pointed in the right direction anymore.   
  
Thomas loomed over him with a look of grim, almost perverse satisfaction, muttering something under his breath before snapping back to attention and looking at Fiona, whose face was now starting to shed tears of shocked disbelief and unbelievable emotional pain.   
  
"Va-**_HOLY SHIT!_**" Came a stunned exclaimation from a door that lead into the hallway to the hangar, revealing a man and a woman who each bore a passing resemblance to Naomi, though the man wore the leather strips around his arms that would one day become that signature, almost universal symbols of mercenaries, bandits, gang members and loners, be it as tattoos or arm bands. Both looked as stunned as his words had been.   
  
"Get out of my way, Irvine," Thomas said without looking to face the newest arrivals. Alarms had started blaring across the base, the two newcomers were too awestruck at their defeated comrade to even hear them. "Same for you, Moonbay."   
  
The hate filled reply, dripping with shattered trust and utter contempt wasn`t long in coming, not from Irvine at least. It was almost instant.   
  
"**_WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?! VAN WAS YOUR FRIEND, YOU BASTARD!_**" He screamed, suddenly reaching towards his backside as the chocolate skinned woman beside him practically dove out of the way with a numbed yell. By the time Irvine had finished drawing his weapon, Leena winced and looked away, another scream of pain filling the hollow confines of the empty garage. It echoed from the walls, followed by the smaller echo of shattering glass and hard cast plastics.   
  
Thomas was gone by the time she opened her eyes again, being greeted instead by the visual of the now irate, concerned and tearful Moonbay gripping Irvine`s downed form in a near bearhug as Fiona stood there in absolute, near catatonic shock. There was blood leaking down the side of his head, both hands covered all of his face and forehead except for one winced, moistening eye, and a loud, booming scream of pain followed from the mercenary, his gun lying near his downed friend, who was painfully quiet with gritty determination.   
  
"Oh my god..." Was all that Leena could think to say.   
  
"It gets worse, but I think you understand that by now. I`ll spare you the details of how his fight with his brother went," Beke said slowly, the scene and the blood, the violence and everything else about it fading away as the world changed to another unfamiliar backdrop, namely the windmill field where the Trinity Ghosts had worked their scheme.   
  
"Suffice to say, the changes could prove... _Very_ negative," it stated needlessly, giving her one last chance to back out now. It was at that moment that a yelp echoed through the emptiness around them and the dog looked up with what Leena could _somehow_ tell was a grave expression, even if the look on Beke`s 'face' hadn`t changed a bit since it had appeared.   
  
There was a distant thud and a small scale explosion of dust before a blonde figure in the distance stood up, wiped himself off and then was standing next to her as if he had been there all along.   
  
"Sorry about that - it took me a while to find you again."   
  
"It`s... Fine..." Leena half-mumbled out, taking a step or two back from the once harmless seeming nerd and swallowing back the urge to try and run away.   
  
He knew why almost instantly.   
  
"You showed her, didn`t you?" Thomas asked, glancing down guiltily at the dog, which gave the equivelent of a shrug.   
  
"She had to know the possible consequences. I didn`t want you there though..."   
  
"I might have altered her eventual decision."   
  
"No," Beke replied, suddenly standing up on hind legs and vanishing into a figure composed purely of 0s and 1s, vaguely outlined as being humanoid in appearance. There were no features beyond shape and outline. "I had to make sure you didn`t watch your own self`s past mistakes, Thomas. Bad enough _she_ had to sit through it, ya know?" It asked neutrally. The blonde gave a slow, agreeing nod before tucking his hands into his pockets with a sigh.   
  
Beke turned to Leena after that, an expression somehow forming from nothing as the outline began to change, shifting until it took the appearance of a black haired Thomas with no tattoo and different clothing. Rather than a special forces uniform, Beke wore what looked like a dark green, Japanese kimono, with black pajama pants and a long sleeved, matching shirt visible just beneath, held loosely shut by a blue, sash-like belt, its shoes changed from boots to slippers, with no gloves.   
  
"I would love to have given you more time to make your choice, Leena," it began, voice suddenly changing to the extent that it matched the pitch and tone of an aged, desert-worn philosopher of some kind. "But time is short. Your friends are looking for you, and I have to take you back to them soon or they`ll start falling apart," it continued before finally finishing.   
  
"Will you accept the changes, or will you stay as you are now?"   
  
At once, everything in her life became nothing but a meaningless build-up.   
  
It had all boiled down to this choice, this moment, this very _instant_ of time where it felt as if the weight of the world itself was dropped into her hands.   
  
It came to a potential sacrifice, and the dangers involved, against the potential salvation of humanity as she knew it on Planet Zi.   
  
It came -   
  
** [**_"Whoops! Sorry Brad!" Leena shouted out gleefully as the Heldigunner and the Command Wolf, along with Benjamin and Brad, vanished into a hail of Megalomax-like cannon fire._**]**  
  
- to one decision -   
  
** [**_"**No one...**"   
  
Guns locked and loaded, targeting system settled onto the Hammerhead and the helpless young man hanging from its underside.   
  
"Stands **me** up **on a date**!"   
  
Harry`s eyes widened, Fuma gasped in absolute disbelief and Leena pulled the trigger.   
  
"**WEASEL UNIT TOTAL ASSAULT!!!**"_**]**   
  
- where the lives of _everything_ -   
  
** [**_"**LEENA!!!**" Harry yelled out as his Iron Kong dove in front of the downed Gunsniper, intent on proving itself as one final, absolutely useless shield against the coming shockwave of death from the Berserk Fury`s charged particle cannon.   
  
"**HARRY!!!**" She yelled back, unable or unwilling to tell him to save himself, even as the Vengeful Dark roared into view, piloted by a madly cackling Leyon Martin._**]**   
  
- and every_one_ -   
  
** [**_"Who`s first?"   
  
"Allow me!"   
  
"Leena! Don`t attack him alone!"   
  
"Oh, crap."_**]**   
  
- lay in _her hands_.   
  
** [**_"Looks like they`re doing pretty good without you."   
  
"... Yeah."_**]**   
  
And for once in her life...   
  
** [**_It was one of those glances you`d be more prone to see with people who had either been meant for each other or had spent their entire lives longing after one person, and in that moment, Leena Tauros realized just how much Harry really did care for her.   
  
She also felt like something of an idiot for not seeing it sooner._**]**   
  
_ For once_, in her _entire_ misbegotten, mistake filled _life_...   
  
** [**_"Take your jacket off... I can`t give you three days, and I can`t give you a bath or any food, but I can still give you some rest. Go to sleep, Harry. I`ll wake you up if anything serious comes up, alright?"   
  
A light, already half-asleep mumble was the response, and for the time being, at least for Leena Tauros and Harry Champ, all was right with the world, even if it was falling apart around them._**]**   
  
Leena Tauros made the _right_ decision...   
  
"I`ll do it."   
  
And at the back of her mind, she could hear a small, confident voice, telling her that she had done just that.   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty-Three

_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Yeah. Sorry this one(and the three after it) were so long in coming, I needed - and **still need** - a break from writing ROC for a while. Hopefully it`s going to be worth the wait, if this chapter alone didn`t make it that way.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** As you can see, Leena was Plan B. G`luck against that demon, I`d offer you a shotgun, but I`m already out of useful ammunition against it...  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** _Not_ King Gojulas. Thomas` L33t Machine was a Giga Gojulas, the only one in the NA/ROC timeline. And yes, I am a sick bastard. Let`s leave it at that.  
  
**Illidan:** If you haven`t already, check through the main page of my website(there`s a link in my FFN profile). My apologies for blocking you `til next Friday, but allow it to serve as a warning to anyone who feels like asking me when a chapter is going to come out after a long wait - **it`ll be out when I finish it**. That is **FINAL**. *Bangs a gavel all Foley-like. Then motions back to the reply.* Dunno why you hate Roc and Madison so much, buuut maybe a few upcoming twists`ll hopefully change your mind. Leena wasn`t tortured horribly, as you can no doubt tell, but you`ll have to wait and see on Jack and Brad, Jamie and Bit...  
  
Welp, that`s all for now folks. Enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	24. Lies

  
  
**Foreword:** Evanescence - Lies  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos **  
_Lies_  
  
  
  


_"**WHERE AM I?!**"_ Came the mental equivelent of a scream as a tan-skinned youth in his mid-teens shot up in a bed he didn`t even recognize as his own, sweat pouring in streams down all over his body. The vest he only barely remembered snatching was on the floor, his boots and gloves lying near it, as with his socks. For a few seconds, he was completely blind, the remains of a tunnel vision so intense that he couldn`t even see _in front of himself_ finally giving away with blaring clarity, his mind rapidly allowing itself to process information again.   
  
Gasping for air, his sense of smell almost choked him as the scent of blood poured through each nostril, pungent and foreboding, but there was nothing there. He was terrified, it was dark and Hell was hot, his very _brain_ ached with a migraine that didn`t even exist and demons that couldn`t be explained were trampling about at the edge of his newly increased vision.   
  
But there was still _nothing_ there.   
  
_ Bound at every limb by my shackles of fear   
  
_ "... H... Home?" He managed to wheeze out, realizing how hoarse his voice was from screaming, and how stale and dry his throat felt along with it. Instinctively, a hand came up and pressed to his neck, but also instinctively, and even a bit fiercely, he threw it back, his own hand flying away as he shot up again, this time moving out of bed and landing on both feet with the terrified posture of a holocaust victim.   
  
Except he wasn`t a victim. He had been the one who carried it out.   
  
An already fragile psyche strained to bear that load, the weight of his actions threatening to break his legs out from under him and implode his taut shoulders right into the base of his neck from stress, the urge to scream rising up from within, but it was quickly supressed.   
  
Jamie Hameros was good at supressing his emotions. Too good. They were threatening to blow up in his face like a powder keg after being doused in gasoline and shot with an incendiary round the size of his fist.   
  
_ Sealed with lies through so many tears   
  
_ His body trembled from cold that wasn`t even there, and balance that had formerly been so undeniably perfect in the form of the Wild Eagle gave out, leaving him to blindly falter in the dark of some sort of prison that looked like a bedroom, smacking face first into a wall before falling over onto his backside and gritting his teeth at the pain.   
  
It took a few seconds longer before recognition, even more terrifying than the demons that had been gnawing away at what fragments remained of his sanity, dawned upon him, leaving him to realize the conclusion that this wasn`t someone else`s room and it wasn`t a prison.   
  
This was Jamie`s own bedroom.   
  
He was home.   
  
He had just carelessly, knowingly _murdered_ over a _thousand people_.   
  
By his _own hands_.   
  
_ Lost from within, pursuing the end   
  
_ The shaking that had first begun when he had lost balance and succumbed to a frigid cold that had never even been there returned, full-force, bringing with it a prolonged, dog-like whimper. Eyes that were ordinarily closer to polished, glass-like concrete suddenly turned a watery gray, and a face that was already dampened by a humidity that didn`t exist suddenly gained two new streaks running down the sides.   
  
An expression of pure, irrational fear became one of freezing, computeresque logic, so horrified that it bordered on resembling something out of an over acted, B-rated horror movie that was too convincing for its own good. The seconds trickled by, and with them, every ounce of composure chipped away, piece by bloody, agonized piece.   
  
_ I fight for the chance to be lied to again   
  
_ "Hnnnn_nnnnnn_nnn_nnn_!" He managed to shakily sound out in the otherwise silent atmosphere of the darkened bedroom, glaring balefully in every direction he could think of as everything flooded back to him, finally leading itself to a panicked, emotion-driven utterance, along with a flimsy, paper weight resolve to carry it out.   
  
"I need a shower," he said to himself, as if it might wash the guilt away.   
  
With only an obsessive habit of collecting a change of clothes to slow him down, Jamie almost ran out of his bedroom, shutting the door so loudly that, if not for the seeming emptiness of the second floor of his family`s home, he probably would have roused _someone_ awake.   
  
But he didn`t. The Hameros home had been built so sturdily and thickly that sound didn`t exactly travel very well through its walls and doors, though the jolt of the door slamming into place was almost enough to shock him into having a seizure.   
  
_ You will never be strong enough   
  
_ A speed walk into the bathroom later, another door slammed and a light flicked on so brightly that it would have probably hurt his eyes if he were actually paying attention. As it stood though, _everything_ was hurting right now. His very _soul_ was hurting and there was a _pit_ in his chest that was so deep, it threatened to suck he and everything around him into an infinite blackness that he didn`t even _want_ to comprehend, but _could_ in terrifying clarity.   
  
By the time the shower had flipped on, Hameros had practically ripped his jumpsuit off, following suit with the pair of briefs he had been wearing for days now, flinging them carelessly out of the way and almost yanking the shower door off the hinge in his haste to get inside, slamming it right back into place the moment he was within, the water already running in the process.   
  
Somewhere along the way, he had grabbed a rag.   
  
Almost instantly, he had begun scrubbing with it. No soap, just scrubbing.   
  
_ You will never be good enough   
  
"I killed all of them..."   
  
_ And he kept scrubbing.   
  
_ You were never conceived in love   
  
_ "**_I KILLED ALL OF THEM!_**"   
  
And he kept scrubbing after that, as if the blood that wasn`t even there was going to miraculously start to somehow fade away.   
  
He kept scrubbing until his skin went raw from where the rag was rubbing so tightly over the bare, inner side of his forearm, and he kept scrubbing still, even as the water kept hitting his chest with the force of an angry pressure hose, cold steam blowing up from where each drop hit him.   
  
_ You will not rise above   
  
_ Still, he kept scrubbing.   
  
The white rag started to turn red, tanned skin began to fade to a near-matching, bruised tint and his vision began to blur from not having blinked in... Minutes? He had lost track of time so badly that he couldn`t even tell how long he had been unintentionally trying to _mutilate_ himself, but then, it all _stopped_.   
  
Just. Like. _That_.   
  
_ They'll never see   
  
_ "That`s enough, Jamie."   
  
The voice was his, but it wasn`t. His body was his, but it wasn`t. This _house_ was _his_, but it _wasn`t_.   
  
"Lemmealone. Justfuckoffman, _**GO AWAY!**_"   
  
Persistence embodied. The voice continued, blotting out the sound of the shower.   
  
"This isn`t helping," it said, as calm and soothing as the soft light of the morning sun.   
  
_ I'll never be   
  
_ "Getawayfromme, you justwannakillme... **_YOU JUST WANNA KILL ME!!!_**" He screamed in accusation, even as the feeling began to seep out of him, the wound on his arm slowly beginning to fade, even as what little control he had on himself broke down, along with his legs.   
  
The shower floor was hard, made of a rough tile intended to provide grip. He was lucky he didn`t bang his head against one of the two in-shower seats that had been built into the cozy, somewhat dimmed cove that the shower itself had been installed in. It bruised his knees though, and it hurt his feet to scrape along the floor on the way down, the grip on that still-reddish rag tightening until his knuckles started to go numb.   
  
_ I'll struggle on and on to feed this hunger   
  
_ "You just want me... To kill _you_... Just like they did..." He muttered out finally, resting his forehead against the seat in front of him. He was still crying, still in pain, but now he was getting angry as well.   
  
Anger in Jamie`s current condition wasn`t just detrimental, it was enough that it might drive him back over the edge again. Will knew that, part of him hazarded a guess that some part of Jamie`s fractured, rational mind would`ve realized it at some point if he had paused to think about it, but that obviously wasn`t going to be happening anytime soon.   
  
_ Burning deep inside of me   
  
_ With growing, constant force, Will tried to wrest control from the other personality, an effort that proved little more than a practice in absolute futility, leaving him pushed back bit by bit as the other fought for control like a rabid animal.   
  
Wounds returned. The one on his arm started to reappear first, as did the bruises along his knees, each of them fighting for existence as the personality they belonged to struggled to keep a grip, the numbness in the knuckles persisting, providing an anchor. Jamie focused, if not consciously then out of pure spite and hatred, the anger he felt forcing a shift in the flow of his feelings, from self-destructive to raw survival instinct.   
  
It was enough to, figuratively speaking, push the Wild Eagle back. On the mental plane, what would have felt to most people like a severe headache took on the appearance of two duelling figures in a sky of infinite, clouded darkness, taking on the appearance of flowing oil mixed with blue ink, no visible ground in sight, just infinity.   
  
Around them flew countless random thoughts and memories. Doorways, windows, a few Zoid parts, pictures and sounds that had shape and substance, bolts of color and tortured thought. Each was a sharp contrast to the other, one outlined a vivid, almost terrifying red, the other a dulled shape of unimpressive blue, each dressed in the same flight uniform that they had been wearing for the past days, each differing from the other even in their expressions.   
  
What would have felt like a headache to most was embodied in a violent assault of fists against the defensive blue figure. It was the avatar representing the Wild Eagle that was taking the abuse, and the avatar of the murderously enraged Jamie Hameros that was dishing it out.   
  
Fists flew at the speed of thought, the figure in blue rocked back a bit more with every blow it failed to fully block, forearms thrown up in a futile gesture of defense, head lowered behind then, legs drawn up to the chest and body curled forward.   
  
_ "**YOU WANTED TO DIE?!**"_ Jamie screamed in thought, lashing out again so hard that Will snapped back, his defenses shattering and an arm flying freely from his attempt at blocking, legs spreading and his other arm flailing about as he sought to maintain his sense of self. It was similar to trying to keep a drop of color from dissolving into a glass of water.   
  
_ "**THEN I`LL KILL YOU!**"_ The normally weaker personality exclaimed, watching his other half tumbling through their mutual abyss. All things considered, if he hadn`t been over the edge a few seconds earlier, he was now.   
  
_ "Something`s wrong,"_ the Wild Eagle commented to himself, though with his current situation, that was almost like telling a death row inmate that he was going to die. _"He`s **never** this strong..."   
  
_ Thought became action, Hameros lunged, Edgars willed himself to drop out of the way, taking advantage of the nature of their warzone to dodge out of the way and beat a hasty, pointless retreat.   
  
Like a hungry, screaming raptor, Jamie swooped back, only to blink out of existence and appear in front of the other personality, which snapped into action reflexively. Jamie might have been stronger at present, but Will was still the most dangerous, lashing out and tagging the other across one eye with a boxing jab, only to pull back and follow up with an uppercut to the stomach.   
  
Jamie rocked back, physically beginning to manifest a black eye as the struggle continued. With the speed of angry, emotion-driven thought, he attacked again, charging forward and practically stabbing a fist into Will`s stomach with enough force that the blue outline threw off violent sparks as a result, each of which faded into oblivion as soon as they entered the abyss, no longer held in place.   
  
A hole sat within the second personality`s midsection for several seconds before the already thin blue outline thinned a bit more, covering it and filling the wound. Almost like a wolf, Jamie grinned, both in reality _and_ in the realm of thought, watching his other side float back in pain that didn`t even exist.   
  
_ "How does it feel to be on the losing end for once, you fucking **PRICK?!**"_ The red avatar demanded, though the blue one only grit his imagined teeth in reply.   
  
_ "How does the black eye feel? What about the knees? Or maybe your knuckles?"_ Will asked, throwing questions out in the hopes that it might distract Jamie too much to keep focused on the battle that was carrying on in their psyche. _"How does it feel to know that you`ve murdered as many people as me?"_ He asked after several nanoseconds.   
  
Wrong question, worse answer.   
  
_ "**SHUT UP!!!**"_ The other screamed, both in the abyss and in reality, so loudly in the former that the many random thoughts in the background were thrown back and out of sight, the black and blue, inkish space around them rippling violently from the nonexistent shockwave. It was only a precursor though, and a whip-like crack echoed through the brain they shared, leaving the Wild Eagle to fall back, now bearing a welt that lined up one side of his shoulder and continued down along his chest to his belly button, sparks flying once again as Jamie fully appeared in front of him, his avatar blurred and stretched to cover the distance between the two like an image viewed through a funhouse mirror, one hand swept down and out in the posture of a karate chop.   
  
Will tumbled back again, slapping into a mental image and vanishing within, only to continue down and slap into the side of a distorted mountain, viewed so closely that it had a pixel effect to it. On impact, more sparks flew, the image itself shook a bit and the mental pixels of the mountainside briefly tore away, only to flood back into place without error. Will froze though, trying to keep his bearings and looking up at the hole he had flown in through.   
  
_ "He really **is** trying to kill me..."_ The Wild Eagle finally realized, having been delayed in doing so for the simple reason that he had been trying to avoid dying in the first place, though Jamie`s usual non-violent nature made it seem hard for him to wrap his own mind around.   
  
_ But through my tears breaks a blinding light   
  
_ Gritting his teeth for the umpteenth time in the umpteenth nano-hour that he and Jamie had been slugging it out, Will stood up, taking a look at his body and noting that his outline had faded again. Where once, it had been as bright as Jamie`s own, now?   
  
Now it was literally just an outline and a bit of a glow. It was barely even there. That was _not_ a good sign.   
  
_ "Fuck."   
  
Birthing a dawn to this endless night   
  
_ No surrender though, and no retreat either, even if things were going downhill and straight to Hell, Jamie wasn`t going to give his alter-ego even the slimmest chance of recovery.   
  
_ "Here we go ag-"_ He was cut off as the image-based world of the thought surrounding him suddenly broke into thousands of pixelated bits and pieces, each one shocked further and further apart by the blistering jolts of red-tinted electricity, all of it emanating from a single point visible in the nonexistent distance of the abyss.   
  
_ "Did you **really** think I`d let you get the chance to catch your breath?"_ Jamie asked, his eyes practically replaced by twin red glows, each seeming more malignant with every blink he took in the real world.   
  
_ "The thought did cross my mind,"_ Will shot back, trying, if nothing else, to gain a few seconds of reprieve from his other self.   
  
"**_YOU DON`T HAVE A MIND!_**" Jamie screamed in the physical world, so loudly that his words practically snapped into the Wild Eagle like the recoil from a handgun. _"You`re a spare **THOUGHT** that I let develop too much! A fucking **daydream** that got carried away!"_ He yelled out afterward in thought, watching the other personality clench his fists in anger.   
  
_ "You little son of a **bitch**,"_ Will finally threw back, his entire, thought-formed body tensing up and leaning forward as if he actually had ground to stand upon. _"I gave up the **only thing in my life** that had **any fucking meaning to me**, just so that **you** could be happy without making the mistake of your **life**!"_ He added irately, still as tense as before, though that outline was still just as faint.   
  
Then, something changed.   
  
"You`re nothing..." Jamie muttered, his resolve starting to instantly crack as he envisioned the Wild Eagle straightening up, a look of resigned disgust on his face. The look of resolve and defiance, Jamie could`ve taken those in stride in his former mindset, but the level of outright disgust - shown without contempt, without any other emotion but calm - was enough to almost level him.   
  
Almost return him to rational thought.   
  
Almost.   
  
_ Almost.   
  
"If I`m nothing, Jamie,"_ Will began as the abyss began to settle. It was slow at first, pixel by imagined pixel, wave of color by thought-generated wave of color. Ground formed beneath the feet of the Wild Eagle, though Jamie was left hovering in air that didn`t exist, a blue sky shifting and fading steadily into view, filled with only sparse, ivory-tinted clouds and a golden, lively sun.   
  
_ Arms outstretched, awaiting me   
  
_ And then Will continued, grass springing from beneath his feet as a single tree began to form at the very top of the hill, so close that the blue personality was practically braced against it, the branches themselves arcing out until they took the appearance of green fathered, brown boned wings, the sun at his back giving some sort of eerie halo as the two personalities glared at each other.   
  
And then even the disgust faded to nothing but apathetic resignation.   
  
_ "Go ahead and do what you want."   
  
_ Dying rage clawed its way back to life with a ferocity unmatched, this final act of resolve shattering the brief period of emerging calm from Hameros` mind, leaving his eyes to blank a deathly shade of red all over again, the crimson outline of his body burning into a full blown aura, which itself seemed to spread and take shape, until it finally resembled a pair of demonic bat wings, sprouting from his upper back, an additional streak of red curling behind him as if it were a tail.   
  
_ "Try and kill me."   
  
An open embrace upon a bleeding tree   
  
_ The world flashed red, ground and the figures who existed upon or near it tinted so black that they were only distinguishable from the side. The sun ceased to exist, the clouds blew away and the grass suddenly began to lose its brilliant green coloring.   
  
When the red faded, the Wild Eagle was pressed back against the stiff support of the tree, standing, but not of his own power. Jamie hung before him murderously, only one hand extended as red liquid - blood - began to seep from the root of the very tree he had impaled his other self to. Callously, he hung there, feet never touching the ground, one leg extended behind him, the other bent forward as if running, his other arm slung carelessly out to the side.   
  
_ Rest in me and I'll comfort you   
  
_ And finally, at last, William Edgars - the Wild Eagle - spoke, if not with their physical voice, then with his thoughts, even as realization slowly began to dawn upon Jamie Hameros, realization of the magnitude of what he had just done.   
  
_ "Now..."   
  
_ A pause. He continued though, smiling slowly, without malice, without anger and without hatred.   
  
_ "Now, you get to live with what you`ve just done. Good luck, brother."   
  
I have lived and I died for you   
  
_ With those words, the Wild Eagle`s eyes slid shut, and the outline faded. His head hung low, the leaves withered and broke away from the tree and the branches withered and died.   
  
_ Abide in me and I vow to you   
  
** Snap.   
  
** I will never forsake you   
  
_ William Edgars was _dead_. Another casualty in the wreckless streak of death perpetrated by _Jamie Hameros_.   
  
"_Oh_... My... _God_..."   
  
Reality of the mind gave way to reality of the body, and as he came to his senses, he also came to the realization that he had just committed murder. Again.   
  
Unlike before though, that realization brought him back from the edge.   
  
With reflexes he could`ve only possessed through fear and guilt, Jamie all but flew back to his feet, dropping the rag in the process, before turning to cover his raw forearm from the streaking water, feeling his fingers starting to prune from the humidity of the shower. As if on auto-pilot, he reached out and turned the flow of water off before flipping the door open and stepping out, like some sort of robot.   
  
He didn`t look at the mirror, if he did, he would`ve seen the black eye he still bore, or the fist-sized bruise on his stomach. He paid those no mind now though, drying himself off as his eyes distantly gazed off into nowhere. Thoughts seemed to be blank, rational thought was deactivated, his brain`s defense mechanisms had finally kicked in and all he could do was live for the instant.   
  
For a few moments, anyway.   
  
_ They'll never see   
  
_ After getting dressed, Jamie left the bathroom, leaving the light on and the exhaust fan running as he bundled his flightsuit up, no longer having need of it since he was wearing his usual clothing. The trademarked khaki jeanshorts and the red-and-white t-shirt that were both two or three sizes too tall for him to wear, though it now looked different on him.   
  
Instead of a young man trying to give the impression of being too casual and comfortable for his own good, it gave the impression of a boy so insecure that he was trying to wear the clothing of an adult to make himself look bigger.   
  
The empty look in his eyes didn`t exactly help either.   
  
Minutes trickled by and he made his way down the hallway, back to the room he had once felt was rightfully his own, now feeling so detached from it that it wasn`t even remotely comfortable for him anymore.   
  
First went his socks. Then sneakers, since the boots would`ve just been redundant at this stage. After that, he collected his old duffel bag, which was promptly and unceremoniously crammed full with his flight suit, a newly de-framed picture of his family, one that had been on his bedstand as well as whatever clothing he could ransack from the closet that he had once felt was his own.   
  
With almost everything else done, Jamie bent down and threw on the vest that his now _dead_ self had once worn as a private middle finger to the people who had sought to imprison them all, slinging it on without thought before grabbing his gloves and pulling them on. As an afterthought, he also grabbed the boots from the floor, finding some way to force them in with the rest of his makeshift supplies and zipping the bag up.   
  
After that, he threw it around his shoulder and made for the door.   
  
_ I'll never be   
  
_ "Is that you, Jamie?" A younger voice asked from behind, just after he had gotten into the hallway and shut his door. It was a voice of innocent curiosity, a voice that could instantly disarm almost anyone, and a voice belonging to one of the three people that Jamie honestly _did_ not want to have to see.   
  
"Yeah," he answered emptily, not turning to face his nine year old sister. "Go back to bed, Linda. I gotta head out now and Mom and Dad would both be upset if they found you up at this hour," he said with as gentle and authoritative a voice he could manage.   
  
Melinda Hameros wasn`t normally the type who scared easily, even for a child, she had a streak of independence and self-assuredness that rivalled most Zoid Warriors. Even if she still played with some of her toys, and even if she was a growing boyband fangirl, she was still the type who had a rebellious nature that could and sometimes did drive people insane.   
  
That made it unnerving when she slowly nodded, her chocolate hair bouncing a bit in the tight, high ponytail she slept with it in. Those big, gray eyes would`ve probably given him a heart attack if he had turned to look at her, the same with her angelic face.   
  
"Alright. Goodnight, Jamie," she offered, turning to go back to her bedroom, having forgotten that she had gotten up out of bed for the express purpose of getting herself a drink in the first place.   
  
"Good-bye, Linda," he replied, waiting until he heard her footsteps lead back into her bedroom, then, as the door shut, he continued from where he had started.   
  
Down he went, through the stairs and then the first living room, opening the door and then shutting it tight, having locked it in the process.   
  
The walk to where the Raynos still stood like a golem was short and bitter, not even the smallest ounce of victory or satisfaction showing in his steps. The climb up was negated, the Zoid itself bent forward and the cockpit opened up expectantly, leaving Jamie to drop his sack in between where his legs would be spaced, and then hop in.   
  
_ I'll struggle on and on to feed this hunger   
  
_ "I`m sorry, everyone," he began finally, having recovered enough of his own sense of being that he could actually think for once. His hands fell to the controls on exhaustion-dulled reflex, fingers clad in thick gloves knowingly avoiding the triggers as he turned the Raynos away and allowed it to break into a quick sprint away from the house.   
  
"But I don`t think I`ll ever be coming back..."   
  
The thruster ignited, the Raynos refused to let out a cry of readyness and instead simply made one well timed jump, legs folding back into their usual in-flight posture.   
  
_ Burning deep inside of me   
  
_ And with that, Jamie Hameros took to the only skies he had ever truly wanted to fly in, the shadow of the Raynos briefly passing over the bedroom window of his sister, and then his mother and father.   
  
He never knew that Linda had been watching him the entire time. He probably wouldn`t have even cared if he did.   
  


_ End Chapter Twenty-Four_  
  


* * *

  
  


**Author`s Notes:** An author screw-up becomes a new character, and Jamie Hameros kills himself. Sort of.  
  
Yeah. Don`t worry, next chapter, we`ll finally be through with the whole... Psychotic-trips-into-the-minds-of-Blitz-Team-members thing :P  
  
Oh, and thank Zinou for the second half of this one. The original second half was utter and complete shit, but thanks to a beta read-and-comment, I got the mental reasoning to re-write it. Aren`t you glad? >_>;  
  
**The Big Fisch:** *Hands out the advils.* :P Thomas did **better** than fine against Van and Irvine. That`s not even accounting for his confrontations with Karl and Raven(Hint: Remember the bit where Shadow was intimidated by Kale and supposedly, the last person to do that had been a murderously dedicated blonde man in his mid-twenties? Gee, wonder who **that** was?). And yes, Leena will be the same way - **to an extent**. She got the same treatment as Beke gave Thomas, but not as intense.  
  
Be worried for Bit`s health anyway. I may not like how the next chapter turned out(compared to the three it falls in line with, it was **really** hard to write, but still at least readable, IMO), but considering what I have planned for that little blonde shit... Yeah. I`d be worried if I were you >_>  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Goody two shoes? Ye gods, man, this is still **LEENA FREAKIN` TAUROS!** Do you honestly expect her to become a full fledged goody-goody little bitch?! As for Thomas... Riese`s bugs had nothing to do with him losing it. She did the damage without them. Ph33r t3h R1353, j0.  
  
And that`s all for now. Enjoy, leave a review, and Sh33p out.  
  
Oh, and if you play Warcraft III/Frozen Throne, go read my new fic, Alliances. Shoddy title, but hell...  
  
Sh33p _really_ out this time. 


	25. Bullet Dancing

  
  
**Foreword:** I suggest Papercut, if ya got it.  
  


* * *

  
  
**

Reign of Chaos

**  
Bullet Dancing   
  
  
  
Nyx. In the language of the Ancient Zoidians, the place had been given a name that doubled as one of the most sincere death threats that could be imagined. In modern days, it was regarded as the one place on the entire planet that no one in their right mind was willing to try and explore, and for good reason. Improperly rumored to have infrequent bursts of energy resembling a Rare Hertz effect, the geology of the Dark Continent was a mixture of volcanic rage and frigid contempt, the atmosphere alone could kill the ordinary man in a few minutes at most.   
  
Nyx was a place that changed constantly, yet never changed at all. Volcanoes blew their tops with megaton-level explosions, only for the lava to freeze like ice in a matter of minutes or hours, never more than a day. Crystals of pure Zoid magnite and countless other rare and priceless minerals dotted the landscape in plain sight, the wealth of the area was impossible to comprehend for anyone with even the slightest ounce of common sense, but the countless riches were forever kept out of the reach of civilization by the environment that forged them.   
  
Nyx was a place that most people had nightmares about. A few cults thought it was Hell made manifest, more than one military superpower in the past had thought it a key strategic advantage only to find the prices _vastly_ too high to be worth making a grab for and it was, quite frankly, probably the single most inhospitable place on the face of the planet.   
  
In Bit Cloud`s thoughts, the cults were right about everything but demons. The demons weren`t everywhere, neither were the souls of the damned, they were in the mind and in the senses.   
  
Sleep and food deprived, dirtier than a used litterbox, void of social contact with anyone even remotely human(in the sense of holding a conversation with more than the most basic sentences possible, or holding a conversation with one`s _mouth_ rather than one`s thoughts) and completely out of the loop with the events of the outside world, the blonde pilot was starting to lose his wits.   
  
Zeke was probably the only thing keeping him from snapping.   
  
"I`m _really_ starting to not like those two," he muttered out with a voice that trailed between anger and annoyance so thinly that it was virtually impossible to tell the two apart.   
  
_ They do what they do for a reason, Bit. It`s not our place to understand until we`re ready_, Zeke said with as soothing a Voice as possible, though the sudden howl of raging, ash-and-snow loaded winds was enough to offset the Organoid`s attempts.   
  
"Understand _what_? So far, all they`ve done is beat the snot out of us, send us off to die and bury me in molten _lava_," he complained. Zeke didn`t answer.   
  
The Liger Zero voiced some of its own feelings in response though, issuing a low growl as it trudged onward through the wide open, barren field that comprised the second third of 'the long way around.' The clouds had thinned a bit in this area, the snow and ashfall were lessened as well, leaving the now-gray Liger to stand out only somewhat against the black and gray background of the terrain around it, leaving behind enormous, feet-deep imprints with every step it took, tail thrashing in its wake.   
  
It was probably the single most exposed, inland area on the continent.   
  
If Bit had been in the right state of mind, he would have probably noticed that fact. As it stood, he didn`t, and Zeke didn`t really bother with it either, though the Liger was still agitated over the fact that anyone viewing it head on would see it like a sore thumb.   
  
"I still don`t see why we couldn`t just run through the city," the blonde added with palpable annoyance, leering off into the distance at the now-obscure red glow from the equally obscured city it was coming from. There was still a line visible from near the mesa he and Zeke had been... Learning on for the past days, running down into the city itself.   
  
_ There are things in that place **infinitely worse** than a long walk_, Zeke replied sharply, so much so that it sounded almost like the swipe of a knife blade. _I wasn`t even **there** and I know that._   
  
"... Question."   
  
_ Hn?   
  
_ "What the hell are you talkin` about?" Bit asked about as bluntly as he could manage, turning back to look straight ahead in the cockpit and taking his hands off the controls. Not like the Liger needed him piloting it at this point. It was just walking in a straight line for the turning point to take the last third of the trip to the area around the Dome, after all.   
  
_ Nothing.   
  
_ "... Riiiiight. You aren`t a very good liar, yanno that?" He asked with a blithe expression, trying to get as comfortable as he could. His clothes were starting to chafe, he hadn`t even changed his underwear since leaving the hospital at Garnhelm.   
  
Among other things, he was also starting to get a five o` clock shadow. Men didn`t grow facial hair too quickly in Bit`s family, with the exception of his disowned, likely dead father, he didn`t have to shave more than once a week on average but he was now well past _that_ due date by two or three times. His hair was also starting to sag down and get a bit longer from how the ash and snow weighted against it while it grew, even if it maintained the appearance of being a spiked up mess, it was losing that effect, while his skin looked about three shades darker from needing to bathe.   
  
It was a wonder he hadn`t gotten sick somehow. Like so many other things, Zeke was to thank for that.   
  
_ Can it.   
  
_ A half-groan. Relative silence followed, punctuated by the sounds of the Liger`s movements.   
  
  
Thrusters died down, twin feet that weighed as much as some Zoids` legs planted into the hellish ground with soft thumps, sinking in only slightly as the once ivory colored, now slate gray Geno Sniper touched down. Camouflaged or not, paint schemes didn`t mean too much in an environment like the type on Nyx. All things considered, the Zoid would`ve blended in just as well had it been painted a festive shade of pink with neon green stabilizer caps, it was all something of a moot point.   
  
_ "Oh where, oh where can my Liger be..."_ She began, humming the tune while scanning the area from where she had set down on. An early warning system had picked up movement out in the tracks, a piece of land that was almost as stable as typical Zian geology. The only reason the Dome hadn`t gone there by now was because it was both too exposed and too distant from the city that the commanders seemed so obsessed with.   
  
_ "Oh where, oh where can he be..."   
  
_ A sudden chime at her right. The Sniper turned accordingly from atop its perch. Like Naomi Fluegel and a good many other long range specialists, Mary Sandler had a preference for sniping from the high ground. Unlike most others though, she didn`t really care if she was exposed or not while doing it. The logic was that an enemy who could see you, couldn`t attack you if he was dead by the time he noticed you. Simple, but it worked.   
  
"Found you," she said to herself, taking in the fine details of the Zoid`s movement in the distance. The Liger was probably two or three miles away, but it was also hiding in plain sight. From the high ground, it wouldn`t be a very easy shot to make. The amount of ash and snow covering the Zoid allowed it to blend in too well to be seen easily from above, while the slow, partially calculated movements it made caused it to blend in even further than it already did.   
  
With her tongue in her cheek and her eyes set on her target, the controls moved almost fluidly, handled with all of the precision of a famous artist with a paintbrush, bringing the Geno Sniper several steps forward before jumping down from the pillar that it had been standing on.   
  
Ash and sand crushed beneath the Zoid`s bladed feet, weaponry rocking on compensating mounts as it touched down. Sureshot waited, straightening the Zoid up and then engaging the footlocks with a dual set of clamps to the ground. The double sniper rifles slipped into view as the armor panels covering them folded back and out of sight, each weapon extending just a bit while closing together until they pressed against each other. The crest atop the Sniper`s head folded upright, revealing a lopsided dome like that of the rifle on a Konig Wolf, only upturned rather than positioned to the side.   
  
_ "Now all I have to do is wait..."_ She thought, carefully guiding each targeting reticule until it set on the shoulders of the Liger Zero. Unlike the Red Comet, Sureshot had a way of instinctively correcting her own aim and anticipating her target`s moves, something that Bit Cloud was probably going to regret finding out firsthand.   
  
  
Movements filled his eyes, vague and yet so very distinct. Sounds echoed into his ears, low but clear enough to pick out the motions of gears turning and guns clamping together through hearing alone. The rancid stench of Hell on Zi wrenched into his nostrils and the feeling of going from frigidly cold to unbearably hot itched across his skin, sometimes causing a bead of sweat to form at his forehead`s hairline.   
  
"----?"   
  
Someone was speaking to him.   
  
"----_?_"   
  
Was that someone also worried about him too?   
  
"----!"   
  
A jolt wrestled him back from the edge of sentience, his sight seemed to infinitely zoom out, and the burning chill leapt from his flesh as if it had been blasted by a pressure hose, while the smell lingered only temporarily, dragging away the foul taste it brought. The sounds became increasingly distant, and for an instant in time, he was deaf, but then he heard again, he wasn`t blind, nor paralyzed, nor nauseous or anything else.   
  
"Vega?!"   
  
"Calm down, man," he finally sputtered out, realizing that his shoulders were probably going to start bruising and his head was going to start hurting if Lars shook him any harder. He was still sitting, but Lars had gotten up and was bent over in front of him with a look of a mixed concern and curiosity, like that of a cat unsure whether or not it should pursue a particularly vulnerable mouse. Almost reflexively, Vega knew what the mouse in question was, just as he knew what the answer to the cat`s unspoken question would probably be.   
  
"Can`t stop sleeping awake, if you know what I mean," he said a bit cryptically. The fingers clasped around his shoulders pulled away, and with them, Lars straightened up, walking back to his chair and plopping down.   
  
"I don`t," he commented, casually brushing the topic aside before he could become too insterested in it. "But I _do_ know that we`ll be leaving land in about... Three minutes, five tops."   
  
"You woke me up to tell me _that_?"   
  
"No, I woke you up because you were drooling to yourself and mumbling incoherently, telling Bit to be ready to jump," Lars answered about as bluntly as a baseball bat. "If you`re that sleepy, you should just go to bed or something. It`s not like we don`t have three or four bedrooms on this crate."   
  
"... Actually, I just kinda... Got carried away with the whole... See all over the world-thing," Vega explained a bit dryly, scratching the back of his neck and giving off a sigh. "Bit Cloud, you know the guy, is about to get nailed. Badly."   
  
"How so?"   
  
"Standard tactic for him when dealing with a sniper is to dodge a bullet. How do you dodge when someone`s calculated every angle you can take to escape?"   
  
"... Ouch," Lars commented distantly, having already lost any and all track of the conversation as it was. He hadn`t exactly been able to keep up with Vega whenever it came to speaking about the Micro Sworders, even if it _did_ still leave him somewhat unnerved.   
  
"There any way for us to go faster?" Vega asked calmly, though there was an underlying sense of anxiousness to his voice. The kid was obviously more than _slightly_ worried.   
  
"If we could, we would," Lars answered, even as the Hammerhead came within visual range of the ocean.   
  
  
_ We`ve got a bit of a problem...   
  
_ "Huh?" Bit asked, still unaware of Sureshot`s very presence, let alone the fact that she had set her sights on him without even directly touching him. The Liger Zero`s ECM suite wasn`t equipped to warn him about that unless someone was directly locked onto it, but Zeke was like a universal cheat code, able to pick out the Geno Sniper by its very mind, narrowing in past that to lock onto the presence of the pilot.   
  
_ Another Geno Saurer Zoid. Different from the last.   
  
_ "How so?"   
  
Zeke muttered something that Bit couldn`t decipher, causing the blonde to raise a brow but keep quiet. Chances were that he wouldn`t have understood anyway.   
  
"Should I start dodging?" He asked, if for no other reason than to drag Zeke out of his ramblings and force him back to reality. The Organoid gave the telepathic equivelent of a nod, an action that precursed the blonde`s hands latching back onto to the controls, pulling back on the right harder than the left.   
  
Reflexively, the Zoid broke into a hard right turn, just as four shots cracked through the air with enough speed to maim the sound barrier, two billowing past the Liger`s rear, a third shooting overhead and the fourth nailing it right in the side with enough force to throw the Zero right off its feet, twisting through the air with smoke pouring out of an explosion in its side.   
  
Liger slammed down on its other side after corkscrewing more than twice its own length through the thick air of ash and snow, having been completely _blindsided_ by its unseen but not unknown attacker.   
  
"_What the hell_?!" Bit managed to gasp out after regaining his bearings, glaring in the direction of the shots. Even if they had completely blown out his sense of balance, it had only made him more determined to take out whoever had fired them.   
  
_ Knew there was something different about this one.   
  
_ "Meaning?!" Bit asked, trying to coax the Liger into staying down. There was the off chance that whoever he was dealing with wouldn`t want to waste ammo on a downed Zoid, that was something that might give him time to plot some sort of counter attack.   
  
_ Meaning we`re up against a Geno Saurer modified for long range combat. A Geno Sniper.   
  
_ "... Pfeh, just means we`ll have to nail the son of a bitch like we did Naomi," he reasoned logically, feeling the Liger slip onto it`s belly completely. Good.   
  
_ The win over Naomi was a fluke.   
  
_ "... **_WHY DOES EVERYONE KEEP INSISTING THAT IT WAS A FLUKE?!_**"   
  
  
"Figures," Mary commented with disappointment, slow to believe that she had just trashed the supposedly invincible Ultimate X Liger Zero with one bullet. She had been intending to, of course, but it was still a surprise, especially considering that the Zoid had been able to bring down the Proto Breaker, and before _that_, dozens of other foes that it shouldn`t have ever been able to even _hit_, let alone _defeat_.   
  
"I guess you`re just not that tough without your armor transformations, are you?" She asked the Zoid, unexpecting of any reply and not getting it either way. "Just another barbarian who never expects an arrow in the eye."   
  
Either way, just to be safe, she began to readjust her aim, locking down the Liger`s position with all four reticules aimed right for the mid-section, intent on blowing it in half and watching the ensuing fireworks. There was no hesitation there, no regret, no second thoughts. Where your typical villainess would probably pause, somehow show remorse over a lifetime of evil deeds, then get struck down and/or fall in love with the hero, Mary Sandler just took aim and began to pull the trigger.   
  
About a fraction of a second late though. By the time she finished, the Liger`s engines blew to life and its forelegs pulled straight, hurling the Zoid off of its belly at near-full speed and causing all four rounds to miss their intended mark completely, plowing into ash and snow-covered ground all at once with a small, flameless explosion.   
  
A roar echoed into her ears, the woman gave off an experienced smirk as the special optics unit that so resembled a dish-shaped crest on the Geno Sniper`s head tracked every movement of the Zoid in relation to her own. Obviously, she had underestimated this one, a mistake she would do her best not to make again.   
  
"Game on, Blondie," she said to herself, the thrusters of the Sniper suddenly blazing to life as the optics unit folded back down and the footlocks disengaged, leaving the Geno to hurtle up from the ground with a partial turn, trying to track the movements of the Liger in a bid to cut it down with another salvo of shots.   
  
  
_ Ever fought a grass hopper with a sniper rifle?   
  
_ "I don`t think I feel like telling jokes right now, Zeke!" Bit complained, bringing the Liger Zero into a wide angling turn as he made his first attack run, only to realize a second too late that there was an airborn fireball flying through the air at low altitude and high speed, turning to face him in the process. "Shit," he managed to get out, suddenly yanking the Zoid into a hard brake and sidestepping.   
  
His instincts proved to be his only saving grace as the ground around where the Liger had formerly been positioned promptly went up in four unified explosions of snow and ash, the Sniper`s third attack having missed about as badly as its second. The blonde didn`t wait around for the Geno to try another attack though, firing the boosters back up and bringing the Zoid into another full run, although this time he was markedly more erratic in holding the same direction for long, zig-zagging and even running in circles at times.   
  
It was a stupid looking tactic, but it kept the pair alive long enough for the Geno to land with a hard, deep skid on the ground, footlocks engaging as the thrusters cut off, the sniper rifles already lining up to fire on their target.   
  
Bit whipped around though, not even bothering to take aim as he pulled the trigger and -   
  
  
"_Shit_!"   
  
- rocked the comfortably cramped world of one Mary Sandler, making a direct hit on the chest of the Geno Sniper and blowing off several dozen pounds of snow and ash in the process. Her aim was also thrown as a result, but her experience-honed reflexes weren`t. As if it were a second nature to her, she disengaged the footlocks and unfolded the armor panels back over the retracting sniper rifles, giving life to the Sniper`s melee-oriented pincer weapons once again.   
  
It was obviously the chance the Liger had been waiting for, as its claws lit up with a golden shine, vaporizing dust and ash in their wake as the smaller Zoid made its attack run, heading straight for the Sniper without even the slightest hesitation.   
  
"Rookie move," Sureshot commented with a sneer, turning partially and lower a shield-arm to face the charging Zero, then biding her time.   
  
The Liger jumped, snow and ash tearing off by the bucket load, thrusters burning, claws lit up like small, jagged suns, one of which was coming down right at the Sniper. It was an attack that few Zoids had ever managed to survive, but those few Zoids were promptly joined by a new arrival as the Geno whipped its lowered arm up and smashed the Liger like a baseball bat nailing a home run, parrying the Strike Laser Claw and sending the smaller Zoid flying up into the air.   
  
Mary smirked to herself, bringing the Geno into a half-crouched stance and readying her other shield arm, the claws already shut tightly.   
  
  
_ "She actually blocked it?!"_ Some rational part of Bit`s mind yelped, the rest of him being a bit too busy screaming as the dulled after effects of the blow coursed through his body, the thrusters cutting out and the glow literally bursting off of the claws of the Liger Zero.   
  
_ Grass hopper with a sniper rifle that doubles as a baseball bat.   
  
_ "How can you make jokes right now?!" _All_ of him complained as the momentum of going straight up came to a slow stop, yanking Bit forward and lifting him out of his seat for a fraction of a second before his harness kicked back in and held him back down, just as the Liger started falling back towards the hellish ground below, only to stop and suddenly jar violently to the side as the Geno Sniper smacked it with its other shield arm, only to catch it _again_ with a smack from the first.   
  
All momentum stopped, the Liger growled out in pain and finally hit the ground, feet first on its hind legs, the shorter arms of the Sniper having already seized a merciless grasp to either shoulder.   
  
Furiously, the smaller Zoid left the ground, yanked into the air only to be judo-tossed back into the ash and snow, but not before Bit could pull the triggers and send off two rounds into the collar of the larger Zoid at point blank, right before the claws released their grip and the Geno stumbled away, smoking from the points of impact while the Liger crashed into the ground on its back.   
  
"_Now_, we`re talkin`!" Bit commented enthusiastically, even if he _was_ hanging upside down while doing it.   
  
The Liger responded fluidly by engaging its thrusters, effectively catapulting itself back off the ground as Bit and Zeke guided those lethal claws to hit their mark, even if they weren`t energized at the moment.   
  
The Sniper stumbled back even further from the added weight of a corkscrewing Zoid lashing out at it with the equivelent of a right hook across the face, but the other pilot was good enough to recover and try to catch the Zero from behind with the Geno`s tail. It was a missed attack, and the Liger landed on all fours, whipping around in a skid before firing again.   
  
  
Instincts kicked back in, thrusters went with them and Sureshot`s Zoid launched up from the ground in another jet powered jump, screeching over the Liger Zero`s attacks and then the other Zoid itself before continuing on as Mary pushed it to its limits, trying to put as much distance between herself and the Liger as possible.   
  
_ "Forgot how dangerous that thing`s supposed to be up close,"_ she thought to herself, sparing a glance to the monitor with a wireframe indicating damage. Yellow at all points where the Zero had scored hits, but no red.  
  
_"Good,"_ she thought, feeling the momentum hold for a few more seconds before the Geno Sniper slammed back down on both feet, thrusters cutting off only to blow back to life and force it back into the air, this time into a wide angled turn, which itself came with a snapping twist to face the smaller, grayer Zoid.   
  
The Liger was in pursuit now, moving in a straight, dedicated line.   
  
_ "Don`t think so, chump,"_ she thought, pressing two neglected triggers on each joystick and taking aim.   
  
With perfect timing, the Geno Sniper`s clawed hands flipped open in either direction, exposing two triple-barreled guns in the process, each of which extended up and onto the forearms, which in turn revealed two noticably larger, telescoping barrels as a result.   
  
"Dodge this, blondie."   
  
Her aim set, Sureshot pulled the trigger with no hesitation and even less mercy.   
  
  
_ Get out the way!   
  
_ "I _can`t_," Bit replied with an annoyed growl, only to pull the controls back, turn them inward and push them forward once more, an action which caused a flare of gold to shock into existence in front of the Liger Zero, melting even more snow and ash off in the process.   
  
The shield activation couldn`t have come a moment later, because a barrage of machine gun rounds and low-level charged particle beams followed suit, bringing the Zoid to a near-stop within seconds, the boosters cutting out pre-emptively and the feet trying to lock into place to withstand the Sniper`s onslaught without being thrown back while doing it.   
  
"Do _all_ of them have that damn weapon?!" Bit complained, coaxing the Liger onward despite itself.   
  
_ Don`t jinx it_, Zeke ordered with a far less enthused tone.   
  
Considering the barrage it was enduring, it was almost miraculous that the shield held, lasting through constant, focused bombardments from the beams and the chainguns alike, even at closing range once the Geno finally touched down and stopped in place, only to flip the footlocks back down in an instant, the armor panels folding back once again to reveal the newly extending quad sniper rifles, each of which was slowly spreading apart, as if to gain a more angled trajectory.   
  
"... Awww, hell..."   
  
  
"_Bye bye_!" Mary shouted with a rare enthusiasm, pulling the triggers again and rocking the Sniper back as a result.   
  
Four armor piercing sniper rounds cracked through the hellish atmosphere, landing right between the onslaught of beams and bullets on the Liger`s shield, the golden energy that sustained it promptly flaring one last time and dying as Sureshot cut out the particle beams and gattling guns.   
  
The Liger stood for a few seconds, then dropped as an explosion flared from beneath its head on the ground. The Zoid ceased moving at that point, eyes dimming down.   
  
"And now, to be on the safe side..."   
  
  
"Ow..." Bit groaned, watching the cockpit suddenly start going dark.   
  
_ That could`ve gone better...   
  
_ "What the hell did she do?" He asked, shaking Liger`s cobwebs out of his own head and then looking at the only active monitor in the cockpit, watching as the Geno Sniper started retracting and concealing its guns once again. Armor panels folded back out, barrels retracted, the clawed hands transformed back to normal as the particle guns and chainguns vanished back into the forearms, and then the footlocks disengaged all over again.   
  
"What I wouldn`t give for the Jaeger right now," Bit muttered as the Sniper spread its legs back out, re-engaging the footlocks once more.   
  
The tail went rigid and the jaw almost looked like it was coming unhinged as a wide barrel began to extend from the recesses of its formerly concealed throat.   
  
Almost in response to his sudden rush of fear at the sight of what looked like a charged particle cannon, the Liger rumbled back to life, the cockpit dimly regaining its systems. The main monitor was darkened, almost grey still, and the controls were still unresponsive, but the Zoid wasn`t about to let him down again.   
  
Neither was Zeke.   
  
_ I can give us one burst. Use it_, the Organoid ordered, suddenly sounding tired. Bit gave a nod to nothing, keeping his grip on the controls and grinding his teeth together.   
  
Electricity began to crackle along the inside of the barrel -   
  
  
- and Sureshot grimaced deeply.   
  
The Liger was starting to get up. It was moving again.   
  
The orange glow had returned to its optics, but only barely. The thrusters weren`t engaged, the Zoid was obviously unbalanced and it wasn`t even going to come _close_ to being able to manage a dodge in its current, disoriented state.   
  
"No wonder that thing killed Davis," she commented uncaringly, slowly adjusting her aim so that the Geno Sniper`s most powerful weapon was set to fire right through the Liger`s cockpit.   
  
"Too bad your luck isn`t gonna help you out this time."   
  
With that, she made ready to pull the last trigger and fire -   
  
  
_** NOW!   
  
**_ - but she did it a bit too late.   
  
In an instant, the remaining layers of ash and snow vaporized off of the Liger Zero, revealing its graceful white armor all over again, but it was only white for less time than it took for Sureshot to pull the trigger.   
  
Bit gasped for air, the entire world slowed down for him and the Liger`s armor suddenly seemed to fade from white to a pale silver, just long enough for the Zoid`s boosters to literally _explode_ back to life like miniature nuclear bombs, at the exact instant that a seventy pound, armor piercing, magnite bullet shot from the huge railgun that the Geno Sniper had been modified around, hurtling through the air and trailing lightning as it did so.   
  
By the time that he realized it, Bit had dodged, slipping beneath the bullet and covering the short distance to the Geno Sniper in under a hundredth of a second, right as the Liger vanished into a silver outline vaguely reminiscent of an Organoid making ready to teleport.   
  
And then, as he finished blinking, the Sniper was gone.   
  
The Liger Zero stood more than a hundred yards ahead of where it had formerly been poised to deliver the killing strike, and time sped back up for its pilot, who almost threw up on himself as a result of how the shift had just effected him.   
  
Zeke lost consciousness, an ash-and-snow covered shield claw stabbed into the ground near the Zero and an explosion ripped through the background, causing the blonde to coax the Liger into turning and facing where it had formerly stood.   
  
The Geno Sniper, now missing one arm and one shield, stood hollow on the ground, bearing a massive, burnt hole that stretched from the torched remains of the right hip to the equally torched remains of the right shoulder. Everything between those two points was gone, as was anything lined up with them.   
  
The explosion in the distance continued, the railgun round having apparently struck any one of the hundreds upon thousands of hypercharged crystals that littered the terrain of Nyx, causing what looked like a sub-nuclear blast as a result.   
  
The Sniper still stood though, as if it had some reason to go on living. Slowly, it started to try and turn, and then the right leg snapped off, causing the broken thing to fall in that direction, only to self-destruct from battle damage before it ever hit the ground. In its aftermath, the newly-worn pilot of the Liger Zero was left with only one question.   
  
"Did _we_ do _that_?" He asked aloud, though neither his Zoid, nor their Organoid provided any sort of answer.   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty-Five  
  


_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Sorry if this one read kinda stale. It was a royal **bitch** to write this one, mainly since it just **would not** come out how I wanted... *Mutter.* But hey, if this one left ya feelin` blah, next one`ll put that @_@!-look in your eyes. I promise >_>  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Half the reason I **want** a fangirl or fanboy to read this is so I can hear their heads explode XD  
  
**Illidan:** *Idly crams his guts back in.* No hard feelings, I get worse :P As for Will: He`s dead. End of story on that one.  
  
Welp, that`s all for now folks. Leave a review, enjoy, and Sh33p out! 


	26. The Lone Wolf

  
  
**Foreword:** If I had to pick one... I`d pick Cowboy Bebop - See You, Space Cowboy, orrrrr Cowboy Bebop - The Real Folk Blues. Different songs, same tune, works just as well with either.  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
The Lone Wolf   
  
  
  


The weapon was a comfortable weight in his grip, a comfortable weight made even more so by the rounds that he knew were in his pocket. It wasn`t much, when one paused to consider the odds he was about to go against, but it was still enough if he played his cards right. The seat was firm, too firm for his own tastes but it had been sat in by his former surrogate brother so often that it had a faint body imprint in it. The cockpit itself was filled with an unbearable tension, the kind that he had only felt several times in his life.   
  
A part of him wondered if Jack would have been mad to see the old thing going like it was about to, assuming that circumstances had been different.   
  
One hand took to the controls. Hesitantly, he put the heavy gun back into his longvest, then raised his other hand to the controls as well. Gustavs had never been his style, he had too big a habit of wrecking them to really like them, but this one seemed to handle just right for his tastes.   
  
The engines rumbled a bit, the heavy armor creaked as well. The trailers were disengaged and the Zoid transport had been perfectly positioned just far enough within the trees to prove invisible to the prying eyes of any guards that might or might not have been on duty.   
  
Silence broke with the sound of a wind chime, no doubt a custom modification that Jack had made. He always _did_ have bad taste, after all.   
  
"I`m all set to trigger the Sleepers, how are things on your end?" The other ex-mercenary asked in a taut voice that only made its usual gruff, deep tone seem even more menacing than it already did.   
  
"Hope the old Burger Gustav is insured," Brad replied. If the situation were changed, he probably would have been grinning at the statement.   
  
"I doubt insurance even pays anymore. Start your run at the first explosion, got it?" Jack asked, equally as business-minded as his younger comrade was.   
  
"Got it," Brad said bluntly, popping open the cockpit and getting ready.   
  
** [**_"Four orders o` fries and a burger," the girl at the counter said, handing a tray to the dirty looking pre-teen by the name of Johnathan Sebastian. He was obviously not the best fed boy his age, and the scar across his exposed shoulder proved that he wasn`t the best taken care of either. Still, he paid for the order, took the tray and walked over to a table where three other boys were sitting.   
  
Brad Hunter, Eric Sanders and Hal Edwards. Each of them was a bit shorter than the last, with Brad being the tallest after John,, Sanders being the most heavy set despite his equally underfed physique and Hal being the skinniest of them all.   
  
Hal was also the first one to pull a jagged looking, home-made knife out of his pocket and start cutting the burger into four equal pieces by the time John had sat down._**]**   
  
An explosion sounded in the distance, ice blue eyes shifted and narrowed in its direction and Brad`s foot seemed to become a solid lead weight, each hand leaving the steering in the process.   
  
The first went to the rim of the cockpit, the second went to the cruise control switch, which was promptly flipped so hard that the plastic threatened to break. Dirt screeched under the heavy transport`s wheels, but by the time it began to move, the limberly built man with the stripes on his arms had made his move, leaping out of the cockpit and landing in a crouch before rolling out of the way of the Zoid`s stabilizer cap.   
  
A tree snapped like a twig and collapsed onto the old Burger Gustav building, only to snap further as Jack`s Gustav plowed right through it, crashing into the building and leveling it completely.   
  
Brad drew his gun and broke into a sprint away from the crash, all but diving into an alleyway between an ice cream shop that had been one of the burger joint`s only close competitors and the hotel that sat next to it. Instinct guided him to kneel behind an old dumpster that had most likely not been touched in two or three years, reaching into his vest and then drawing the weapon out of the inner pocket he had crammed it in.   
  
It was huge, as six shooters go. Gunmetal black and polished to a neat shine, the rubber grip intentionally made rough and dry, with finely crafted grooves to further aid the fingers. The barrel was awkwardly placed to fire from the bottom of the revolving six shot clip, while a heavily weighted strip of metal above it had been pressed with initials for four people on one side, along with an old quote on the other, one with more meanings than most people would ever realize.   
  
** [**_"You are who you choose to be."_**]**   
  
Seconds trickled by. Footsteps followed, ones that he could only barely register. When they stopped, he stood up in a snap, the heavy revolver already held out and aimed in front of him. No one in his line of sight.   
  
** [__**"Dumbasses," thought the thirteen year old Brad Hunter as the fifteen year old Johnathan Sebastian sat nearby, clutching his badly bleeding forehead with a wince. Eric knelt next to him, but Brad was already moving in a run with vengeance in mind, bursting out of the alleyway with-**]**   
  
- gun in hand, his aim already coming into effect.   
  
** [**_There were four of them, one with a knife that was dripping with Jack`s blood, another with a busted temple, the third with a bleeding stomach, and the other holding his arm from where Eric had stabbed him through the bone. Brad would-_**]**   
  
- show no mercy with the element of surprise, pulling the trigger and reeling from the straight kickback of the gun. Unlike your average handgun, Jack and Brad`s customs both used the weight of the extra metal and the awkward position of the barrel to force the recoil back down, sending the counterforce of firing them straight into the hand at just the right angle to avoid throwing one`s aim off if they were resilient enough to hold their arm forward.   
  
Two shots -   
  
** [**_- and the first gangster went down, the one who had injured Jack. The attack was angry and fierce, but Brad was relentless with it, stabbing him from behind with his own home made dagger. The piece of jagged pipe went through skin like a real knife, punching inches deep into the youth`s skin, piercing organs and cracking through bone before tearing back out. The second-_**]**   
  
- dropped by the time his comrade`s blood finished spraying into the air. Neither man even managed to turn around and view their assassin, which was exactly what Brad had intended. Explosions lit through the twilight before dawn as Hunter took off into a run down another alleyway, he knew them all like the back of his hand.   
  
Little had changed in the years since he had left the town, the back alleys and the streets had become cleaner, but all the layers of dirt and grime removed still didn`t change their patterning.   
  
He moved in a straight line, counting off the four bullets that he knew he had left and then skidding to a halt at a junction between four paths. Right went directly to the church, straight meant having to take the long way, but straight also meant that there was less of a chance of being spotted.   
  
So he moved straight, beginning to continue his run only to realize a second too late-   
  
** [**_- he had been spotted. A knife whistled through the air as several members of the more established gang that had grown up almost a generation earlier in the city shouted and began to pursue, though Brad was no longer in any condition to try and outrun them._**]**   
  
The bullet had hit him right through one leg, missing the bone and the critical veins and arteries, but still tearing muscle and leaving him to almost double over at the first step he tried to take with it, forcing him to stumble along, dragging his wounded foot in his wake and propping most of his weight on the other leg.   
  
"_Shit_," he bit out, resting one hand on the brick wall of the building next to him, then slinging the other - the one with Jack`s gun - around to face the intersection.   
  
His instincts were right as four men, all heavily armed with sub-machine guns, jammed into the alleyway. He dropped them like flies by the time the last one finished taking aim at him, a bullet in each of their newly-removed faces, aimed perfectly to go straight into the brain.   
  
_ "I`ve been hit,"_ he told himself. _"Gotta be more careful,"_ he added, hobbling to where he leaned against the wall, then pulling out six rounds on a stamping device of some sort. Frantically, but with precision, he yanked the gun open with one hand, the spent cartridges popping out. The stamp went into place, Brad pressed the handle and all six rounds slipped into place instantly.   
  
The stamp was discarded, his hand jerked up and the gun slapped shut all over again, and not a moment too soon either...   
  
** [**_"There they are!"   
  
Hal lay dead in a pool of his own blood. Eric and Brad stood over him in shock as the rain poured down, accented by thunder and lightning while Jack grabbed the nearest piece of hardened debris he could get his hands on - in this case, a discarded baseball bat._**]**   
  
Gunshots tore through the air, bullets hit like piranha bites into the concrete and brick, at least one hitting flesh as Hunter threw the gun forward without consciously bothering to aim it.   
  
The trigger was pulled -   
  
** [**_"**AHHHH!!!**"   
  
A crack of the bat, the first gang member went down, bleeding from a busted temple as the second closed in. The baseball bat was like a katana in the unskilled, yet lethal hands of fifteen year old Johnathan Sebastian, who smacked aside the second`s knife with it, possibly breaking a finger or two in the process before lashing out with a kick to the groin. The twenty year old yelped and stumbled over, the butt of the baseball bat jabbing down near his neck.   
  
John recovered with the speed of youth, hopping back and making ready to crack open the older gangster`s skull, but his tunnel vision damned him as another knife flicked through the air and slashed deeply across his forehead, from hairline to hairline, almost down to the bone. With a pained scream, he fell back, the knife whipping back around and cutting a shallower swath just over his right eye, moving downward this time and barely missing his eye and cheekbone in the process.   
  
Rain and blood mixed in seconds, Jack was only barely able to turn around by the time he had to close his eyes or face being blinded by his own blood leaking down into them, exposing himself to another knife wound in the process, this time a stab near the small of the back.   
  
By the time that the gangster had drawn back, Brad and Eric were all over both he and his downed comrade, with Sanders plunging the stolen knife of one of the second gangster into the original owner`s stomach and pulling it out the long way, while Brad literally dove over the falling John`s body and tackled the other`s attack to the ground, fists flying in an irate barrage that only grief could cause.   
  
"**I`ll kill you**!" Brad screamed - and meant every word of it, his fists raining into his victim`s face even faster than the water pouring down on all of them.   
  
A bullet flew through the air-_**]**   
  
And one of the guards went down, followed by another of his fellows, even as the lone wolf faltered back, his free hand automatically falling to his newly bloodied side. They weren`t excellent, but they were also distracted by what Jack was doing to their Sleepers, and that was all the opening that Brad needed.   
  
Another gunshot followed, the third soldier fell and died with a crater in his skull.   
  
"**_Fuck_**," he growled out, stumbling forward on his good leg and breathing hard as blood start leaking from the wound in his side. It wasn`t a killer, not from the gunshot itself, but combined with the shot to his leg and potential infection...   
  
"_No_," Brad bit out to himself. "I`ve got a _job_ to do."   
  
With that, he willed himself onward, staggering through the alleyway and coming up to its edge, slowing his breathing down as much as possible and leaning against the corner.   
  
** [**_The handgun was fast, but Eric was faster, flinging himself off of the ground and stabbing the gunman in the arm. His shot had missed, but the damage had been done to the group as a whole.   
  
Hal was dead, John was deeply injured and Eric and Brad were the only ones left with any fight in them.   
  
The knife ground through flesh and muscle, tearing right into bone and cutting straight through as a result, receiving a hard, angry twist before tearing back out, the butt of the weapon cracking hard across the gunman`s cheekbone. Sanders was normally a calm, reserved individual, but he had a hidden rage that boiled like Hell beneath his surface, the kind that was triggered only by the kinds of conditions he was in now.   
  
The kind that could allow him to murder someone in cold blood, looking into their eyes as he did it.   
  
With that rage still flaming in his eyes, the teen drew back for a killing blow, intent on stabbing the bastard through his eye and into his brain, but Brad was faster still, grabbing him by the wrist and yanking him away.   
  
"**I`LL FUCKIN` KILL YOU!**" Eric screamed, throwing the knife down and running to where Jack was knelt, as if his threats were going to be carried out at a later date. He and Brad virtually yanked Sebastian off of his knees on the ground, each shouldering him and running off into the night without a word._**]**   
  
Three bullets.   
  
Just like he had so many years before, Brad threw himself out of the alley, this time flying through the air on his side, the gun held out. Just as he`d expected, the soldiers had three pals who weren`t going to play by his rules and rush into a cramped combat situation, each waiting to ambush him.   
  
Unfortunately for them, _they_ were the ones who were ambushed.   
  
More gunshots rang out, the barely-paved road exploded in miniature dust geysers, and one by one, the men went down. The first had his head literally _blown off_ as the bullet tore through his throat with enough force to blow a man`s chest open with full body armor. The second had part of his head blown up in his helmet, which was ripped off by the bullet that killed him, scalping what remained of his skull in the process.   
  
Brad screamed in pain as the third troop scored a direct hit - or _three_ - on his shoulder, the first punching straight through the outmost side and the second two tearing into the wound, even as his gun-toting hand shifted its aim, one final bullet scrambling the man`s brains. He didn`t wear a helmet like the second, but it wouldn`t have made a difference.   
  
The three bodies fell, Brad went down with them on his good shoulder, blood leaking down from the wound on his other.   
  
_ "Need a reload..."_ He thought, _forcing_ his arm to move into his pocket on sheer willpower, then drawing out his remaining six bullets. The gun snapped open, the spent shells popped out and the six new ones were clumsily, painfully put in, not that he could do anything with precision using the arm with a wounded shoulder. To make matters worse, it was his right arm, just as the first wound had been to his right leg. That made one side of his body nearly useless, while the wound to his side was on the left.   
  
"I hate this shit," he winced out, using his good elbow and leg to scrape along on the quasi-asphalt, over to a street light, which he promptly leaned against on the ground, trying to catch his breath.   
  
Another explosion ripped up in the distance, just as three more soldiers ran out of the church, guns raised. Brad played dead, hanging his head and holding his breath, praying to any god that existed that they wouldn`t shoot him.   
  
Each of the three covered the distance to their fallen comrades in record time, but all of them vanished a second later as a pair of heavy plasma bolts screamed through the air and slammed into the ground, causing an explosion that licked at Brad`s feet.   
  
_ "Knew those Sleepers wouldn`t hold `im for long..."   
  
_ "**_STOP FIRING OR WE`LL START KILLING HOSTAGES!!!_**" Came the cry over a loudspeaker from the church.   
  
His eyes snapped open, resolve made them look even colder, sweat poured down his face and his teeth were shown in a furious display. Jack, wherever he was, never fired a second shot. It was obvious that those in the church weren`t paying attention to the lone gunman anymore.   
  
"_Good_," he spat. They were digging their own graves and saving him some effort.   
  
By force, he started sliding up to his feet on the street lamp, his right hand was starting to go numb, in addition to shaking incessantly. He ignored it. His leg was throbbing from the gunshot wound to his thigh, but he ignored that too, stumbling and staggering forward through the smoke of Jack`s single strike before finally breaking into a hard, almost impossible run.   
  
He hit face first into the church`s outer wall, scraping alongside it in his pained walk towards the corner. It was a left turn, making it impossible for him to effectively check ahead of time.   
  
Exhaustedly, he continued, stopping briefly near the corner before wheeling around it, gun poised to fire, but no one was there. The doors were still open, but no one was running out. That meant they probably had everyone packed upstairs or guns were trained on everyone down below. Either way, it wasn`t the kind of firefight he really wanted to go into...   
  
But he had to.   
  
** [**_"Something on your mind?" Sister Ilene asked thoughtfully as she walked into the main room. Johnathan, in full bandages, sat across the aisle. Eric had gone to bed after making sure the two would stay.   
  
It was a church after all, one that sported an orphanage, though when it came to the three boys in question, it was more or less a hospital that sometimes took them in. It had never been prosperous enough to properly care for them as far as food went, but the attendants tried their best, and what they had went a long way.   
  
One thing they had in abundance though, was kindness.   
  
"... I..." Brad trailed off heavily, staring at the altar without anything to say for what he had done. John wasn`t quite as mute.   
  
"Sister, I... Have a question," John began, though his voice was weighted by injury.   
  
"Ask away, dear boy," Ilene said. She was younger than the other attendants, and though she was by no means a celibate after having been married over the course of the past year, she still had an air of purity that the others almost all lacked, save for the recently departed Father.   
  
"What do you become when you can`t forgive yourself for something you`ve done, and you`re not sure if God will either?" Sebastian asked uncertainly, though the question really wasn`t for him. It was Brad`s, he just didn`t have the courage to ask it. Ilene didn`t seem to mind, crouching down between the two with a smile that seemed as bright as a full moon on an otherwise starless night.   
  
"You are who you choose to be, Johnathan. God will forgive you either way, so long as you try to do what`s right," she began, shifting her gaze from John to Brad, those deep, violet colored eyes seeming to know that whatever horrible secret he was keeping, it needed some form of resolution.   
  
"You`ll find forgiveness someday, too," she said. He only gave her the same sideways glance he would one day give to someone else who would ask the question that would define his life in a few short words._**]**   
  
With courage and resolve, he threw himself through the doors, ignoring the terrified adults who were crowded together in the rows of seats, all of them hunched down for fear of being shot.   
  
** [**_"If we are who we choose to be..." John began, interrupting the conversation between the other two.   
  
"Can I be Jack Sisco?" He asked. The name was the same as that of the departed Father that had so looked after all four of them throughout their early childhood.   
  
Ilene hesitated, then turned to him with a soft, almost bemused smile.   
  
"Yes. Jack it is."_**]**  
  
A yell, bullets flew with precision before the four guards could ever hope to even take aim at him or anyone else. Blood slipped into the air, screams followed and four bodies hit the floor, all falling at nearly the same time.   
  
"_Get out of here, all of you_!" He shouted at them, though none dared to move, save for one woman.   
  
She was older now. A bit taller, a bit rougher around the edges of the eyes but still just as radiant and beautiful as she had been back there. Her light red hair had been let out of the nun`s hat she had once worn, her robes had changed to those of a priest, but there was still the look of sincere concern that he always been one of her countless trademarks.   
  
Were she a bit taller, and if her hair wasn`t smoothed straight down, Ilene Canaris would have looked almost exactly like Naomi Fluegel, and if her hair was shorter and bubblegum pink, she would`ve born a similar resemblance to Leena Tauros.   
  
"_Brad_?" She said with disbelief, though he only gave one of the rarest, most lopsided smirks in all of history in response, using his gun wielding hand to steady himself in the walk he made for the stairs.   
  
"Try and get them out of here, Sister," he ordered huskily, sparing her the pleasantries of an unpleasant reunion.   
  
"... Mother, now..." She offered, rushing to his side and doing her best to try and prop him up against her, even if it meant ducking under one of his arms and trying to support his weight on her own, blood staining into her robes in the process.   
  
"Didn`t know the church`d changed that much. Sorry," he said with rare sincerity as she tried to walk him down the aisle. "Just get me to the stairs, I can do the rest..."   
  
"You`re hurt..."   
  
"I`m _dying_, let me do some _good_ with what time I`ve got left," he begged, though he didn`t know if it was the truth or not. God knew it _felt_ like it.   
  
She disagreed, that much was obvious from how her hold on him tightened suddenly, but she went through with it anyway, helping him along as best she could.   
  
The stairs were impossibly high, it felt, but he started climbing them once he got to them anyway. Mother Ilena slipped from beneath his arm and stepped back, the already faded smirk died away and his movements became more labored, the numbness starting to take hold of his arm and leg alike. It was a wonder he hadn`t keeled over in exhaustion yet.   
  
After time unknown, he had made it up the stairs with no resistance, entering the room where the children had been kept. All of them snapped to attention as the bloodied, wolfish man with the gigantic black revolver staggered into the room with what looked like the fire of Hell burning in his blue eyes, and all of them didn`t object when he stumbled out of the way of the door, collapsed to his hands and knees and spoke up raggedly.   
  
"Go. Downstairs... _Now_," he ordered fervantly, holding his head up as the children promptly started running by him for the door, though more than a few had the sense of level headedness to grab those too young to walk and carry them out themselves, going last rather than frantically cramming out through the bottleneck.   
  
No resistance yet. He was starting to wonder if there were even any others, but old instincts kicked in the moment he noticed a vague shadow near the very edge of the entrance to the stairs that lead above.   
  
_ "Figures they`d use the fucking bell tower,"_ he complained to himself after all of the children had left, starting to crawl across the upstairs bedroom with no surrender and no retreat glaring in his eyes. Once at the door frame, he hoisted himself up in whatever way he could manage, the revolver held tightly in hand.   
  
** [**_"You`re a hard man to figure out."_**]**   
  
No hesitation.   
  
He all but leapt like a cat around the corner, the gun raised, and two triggers had been pulled by the time he hit the wall with a half-scream.   
  
A body fell down the stairs, the face now missing from the mouth up to the eyebrows, but it wasn`t a clean kill. Not that killing was _ever_ clean to begin with.   
  
He now had a fourth gunshot wound, this one in his stomach. The bullet had punched right through him, missing the spine by less than an inch but still causing massive damage. It didn`t matter.   
  
With what remained of his energy, he began to walk the last mile up the stairs. If there was anyone left, he was going to kill them. No ifs, no ands, no buts.   
  
** [**_"You are who you choose to be."_**]**   
  
The door was already open, he charged in, gun held high but tunnel vision damned his rush.   
  
The last gunman hid near the door, Brad almost tumbled over the edge, but still managed to prop himself up and turn around in time to take aim.   
  
"_**DON`T FUCK WITH MY CHURCH!**_" He screamed at last, just as the soldier, stood up, taking aim with nearly equal speed and pulling the trigger of his handgun far faster than the injury-slowed ex-mercenary could ever manage. The bullet blazed like a bite sized demon through the air, accompanied by a second gunshot in the opposite direction before the first had ever even ended.   
  
** [**_"So which are you, Brad? A coward, or a hero?"_**]**   
  
One bullet blew past another, one man let out his dying breath and collapsed to the hard wood floor and the other felt his breath become markedly shorter as what felt like a sludge hammer at mach two plowed through a rib, then a lung, then the same rib once again before tearing out of his back with a spurt of blood, the momentum jarring away what little remained of his balance.   
  
Time slowed, Brad Hunter let out a smile and tumbled over the edge, the pain fading to a distant pressure as a coppery taste filled into his mouth, a red, saliva and blood mixture beginning to trail down his lower lip and chin as he entered the air.   
  
Birds took flight in the background the ground gained speed and the lone wolf crashed into the stone paved walkway between the steps and the door of the church on his shoulders and neck. His skull cracked, his neck vertebrae did the same and his formerly good shoulder broke, but no pain reached him.   
  
Instead, he lay there, unable to move, unable to keep his eyes open for more than a few seconds, but by the time they began to slide shut, the sun had begun to come up.   
  
"Never seen a bluer sky..."   
  
He said, and meant it, even as that beautiful, cloudless sky faded to black.   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty-Six  
  


* * *

  
  


_ **Author`s Note:** Didn`t come out **exactly** how I had wanted(the flashbacks weren`t quite what I`d intended them to be), but still worked just as well - if not better.  
  
As for the inevitable religious questions: No. I`m athiest and I view Brad and Jack as being, more or less, agnostic. They left their faith at the door years ago, now they just don`t care too much because they`re trying to live **now**, not in an afterlife or anything like that. Christianity on Zi isn`t even Christianity as most people would recognize it since, due to my own background for how humanity wound up there, it`s more a blend of every religion that the original colonists bore, evolved to compensate for a massively **de**creased population, etc, etc.  
  
Aaaaanyway, onto the replies!  
  
**Illidan:** Well, we had a **few** more deaths than usual, but this time: I`d **really** appreciate it if you comment on something other than the violence. Not mandatory, but still :P  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Vega`s around, but since he and Lars are still burning rubber for Nyx, they probably won`t become highly significant for a little while. Quite welcome for the linkage, by the way.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Technically, she wasn`t acting dumb. When you`ve got an enemy **that** vulnerable, you`re **supposed** to go for the quick and easy kill because you don`t want to waste time dicking around and dodging away from an opponent who most likely won`t be able to dodge an attack or throw one back at you in the first place. She didn`t exactly have foresight into what Zeke was planning after all. As for the next guy...  
  
I`ll let you all wonder on that.  
  
Regarding the WC3 fic: I suggest you leave comments on it in a review for it. And no, John and Chronus aren`t Mark and Kyle redux, I **always** have two or more people who verbally shred each other in my stories, it`s something that goes back to the relationship that formed between Piccolo and Zangya in the HT stories. Rohkai is also not Harabec because, for one thing, Harabec isn`t a 7 foot tall Jamaican Troll in leather pants. The characters aren`t fully developed yet because it`s only on chapter three and I still have more of the main cast to bring in and a main plot to find, I`m not exactly writing it for epic purposes, I`m doing it for my own enjoyment.  
  
And that`s that. Enjoy, leave a review, and Sh33p out. See ya next time!  
  



	27. Dawn

  
  
**Foreword:** For each scene, in this order:   
  
Zoids - Childhood Memories(if ya got it, if ya don`t or can`t find it: Hack Sign - Smallest Delight)  
Hack Sign - Fake Wings(Bittersweet Version, or the regular if you don`t have it or can`t find it)  
ShakkaZombie - Siroi Yami no Naka  
Blue Man Group - Sing Along  
Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood Linkin Park - Opening(for the last quarter of the chapter. All of it)  
  


* * *

**  
  
Reign of Chaos   
**Dawn   
  
  
  


There was a dulled warmth on her back as her sight began to return. The heat was only slight considering that the desert terrain of Zi tended to rather chilly at night, but the dryness itched at her lips like a mosquito bite. Her feet were sore, the sand grinding beneath them made it hard to walk straight without having to overcompensate for the shift that every step made, causing a similar ache in her legs. She had no idea how long she had been walking, but it felt like her brain had been bathed in novacaine.   
  
** [__**"Did... It work?"   
  
"You`ll know soon after you wake up."**]**   
  
A small groan was the only sound she made, raising a hand to her head. It felt like a lifetime had dropped by like a brick being thrown out of an open window and falling in front of a 360* chain of photo cameras, all of them going off so quickly that, if played one after the other, each photo would fit perfectly as a frame of film.   
  
** [**_A twenty year old woman and a man at the age of twenty-three stood side by side, a figure resembling the man, only with black hair, wearing Japanese clothing, stood next to them, staring off to nowhere with a look that crossed somewhere between doubt and self-assurance, arms crossed stoically over his chest. The very universe around them was a fading white, no ground, no enclosures._**]**   
  
"Now I know what a dial-up modem must feel like," she complained, though her voice was cracked and dry. **  
  
[**_The woman had bubblegum pink hair and violet eyes, both she and the man were waving with smiles on their faces._**]**   
  
Idly, it occurred to her that she must have been walking on mental auto-pilot for hours on end, like sleep walking without the actual sleep to walk in. Her eyes were still sore from not even blinking enough during most of her unconscious journey through the sands.   
  
** [**_"... What are you?"   
  
"I`m you. Kinda."_**]**   
  
"Hope they pointed me in the right direction..."   
  
** [**_"... Then... How were you created, if you`re older than me?"   
  
"Beke`s a God Program. He does these things," Thomas chimed in with an expression that almost mirrored Bit`s cocky smirks, differing only because it lacked the ego inherent to the other blonde`s expressions.   
  
"What he means is that... I`m what you`re hopefully going to be like in about... Five years or so."_**]**   
  
Finally, she came to a stop, aching all over and tired enough that she felt almost as bad as Harry had looked the first time she`d seen him in Champton.   
  
"Can`t go on any further," she groaned out tiredly, bracing her hands to her knees with a sigh.   
  
** [**_"What`s your name?" She finally asked this taller, unscarred version of herself.   
  
"I don`t know. I guess, once you leave, I`ll be Leena."_**]**   
  
For a few seconds, there was nothing but silence, and Leena could only stand there alone, closing her eyes tiredly and wheezing.   
  
** [**_"I have a better idea," she said with a hint of suggestion in her voice. The older copy held her question back, waiting for Leena to continue with a curious expression.   
  
"Selene. I always figured that if I had a daughter, I`d name her that... Don`t know if it`s appropriate since you`re kinda my sister but..."_**]**   
  
"Leena?" Cracked a noticably _exhausted_ voice from the top of the sand dune in front of her. Almost reflexively, she straightened up, opening her eyes as the sunlight filtered through. As she did, she was treated to one of the most endearing sights of her life: Harry Champ coming two steps short of crashing a jeep trying to get to her.   
  
"**_LEENA!_**"   
  
** [**_"Selene it is then... Sis."_**]**   
  
A tired smile slowly etched its way onto the teen`s face, though the tiredness in it was mostly faded by now.   
  
** [**_A twenty year old woman and a twenty-three year old man waved good-bye, a silent, winking fellow with black hair giving a peace sign from behind them. And then the world went completely white._**]**   
  
_ "I guess they all set me in the right direction, after all,"_ she mused as the jeep came to a screeching halt, Sebastian and Benjamin both flying out of the backseat and crashing to the ground, even while Harry practically went airborn towards her.   
  
Neither of them saw it, but a small black speck streaked over the horizon behind them, casting a faded, saurian shadow over both of them. If they could see it closer, they probably would`ve mistaken the expressionless shell to be smiling down at them as it blazed off to wherever Beke had felt would be best, for however long it would be until the last creation of Thomas Schubaltz was needed again...   
  
  
"... Good job, man," Jack said with a hollow voice. It had taken roughly two hours for the crowd to disperse enough for him to get a word in edgewise. People wanted to see the body of the man who had saved their lives, he could hardly blame them but...   
  
In a way, he really _did_ blame them though. He felt spite against them, at the same time that he felt bitter towards the men who had taken them hostage in the first place.   
  
Jack Sisco, or Johnathan Sebastian, depending on when and how you knew him, had an unnerving trait that he had learned from Stigma Stoller, one where he could look almost like a corpse whenever his emotions boiled over. It was an unnatural progression from his detached emotional stance in the aftermath of Hal Edwards` death.   
  
Right now, he bore a look on his face that would`ve turned the Taskers blue in shock and Stoller green with envy.   
  
The only other living person within earshot was Mother Ilene, her head bowed in respect, hands clasped around the cross that she usually wore on her neck. There were visible streaks down her naturally graceful face from tears that had been pouring out ever since the man lying dead at her feet had left her sight.   
  
"I... Don`t have a damn clue what else to say, Brad," Jack mumbled out, unsure of what he could possibly do or say for the first time in five or six years. Suffice to say, it wasn`t something that happened often. "You gave it your all and... In the end, you came through. But you didn`t live to tell about it..."   
  
A pause. Then a dry, almost arid chuckle.   
  
"First Hal, then you... Ten years from now, I wonder if me or Eric`ll be burying each other..."   
  
It was a morbid statement. If not for Ilene`s near paralyzation, she probably would have slapped him for it. As it stood, she was too busy with her own grief and near-silent prayers to even hear him.   
  
"... I guess all I can do is give her your gun, huh?" Jack finally asked, staring at his dead comrade`s face as the corpse-like expression shifted slightly. They hadn`t exactly had much in the way of a death talk, it had boiled down to comments over who would get whose stereo, that was it. Neither had gone in with the intention or the expectation of dying, and neither had prepared for it as a result. It just hadn`t been on their mutual agenda, but now?   
  
"I know I kinda... Left my religion with Hal`s coffin, but... If you see him or God... Tell `em I said hi, will ya?" He asked, straightening his bandana and then turning towards Ilene, his grim look having briefly faded to an undeniably morbid smile. He wouldn`t be crying anytime soon, nor would he be drowning his grief either, he wasn`t like that, but he would definately carry through with his word.   
  
"Mother," he began. "How long will it be... Before the funeral?"   
  
"... With times as trying as these?" She asked, lifting her head and slowly moving to put the cross back around her neck. The sun continued to shine down on the both of them, and Brad`s body as well. "I don`t know. First, we`ll have to clear out the Church... Clean away the blood, re-sanctify it..."   
  
"A few weeks? A month? More?"   
  
"I don`t know," she reaffirmed darkly.   
  
"Then I`ll just have to come back when I get the chance. Don`t postpone it for my sake, alright?" He asked somberly, to which Mother Canaris only nodded. With that, Jack turned to leave, only to stop himself short and speak up one last time to his fallen comrade.   
  
"You were who you chose to be, Brad. I`m proud of you."   
  
And with that, he left, having already collected and reholstered his gun in his jacket from the dead man`s grasp.   
  
  
***BOOM**.*   
  
"Bomb."   
  
***BANG**.*   
  
"No, _that_ was a bomb."   
  
***CRACK-BOOM**.*   
  
"... Zoid. Yanno, I could think of a few million better ways to greet the day. Like... With _coffee_. And my _girlfriend_ maybe," one of the two morbidly casual pilots commented with a lazy yawn as the cockpit slipped shut, the monitor lighting up as he slipped the safety harness into place. The Zoid gave a synthesized rumble and lifted its head, an action virtually duplicated by the contrasting Zoid next to it.   
  
The two differed in almost every way. One was a slightly oversized Liger, the other was a slightly undersized Fox. One was black and gold, the other was white and, in some places, red. One was armed primarily to take something out at range, the other was ideal for going point blank. Even the pilots were a mix-and-match contrast to each other, even if they acted almost like brothers.   
  
"Well-" ***BANG!*** "Bomb. Anyway, it`s not _my_ fault you overslept too much to say 'see ya later' or anything," the slightly older of the two commented.   
  
***CRACK-BOOM**.*   
  
"Zoid... And whatever, let`s just get out there before Beck trashes everything," the younger of the pair muttered out, feeling the very real desire to do some _damage_ to _something_.   
  
"... Pie."   
  
***THRACK-BLAM**.*   
  
"... Fuck you," Mark grumbled out, even as another of the countless minor tremors rattled through the city. The Shadow Fox rotated its gears in an action similar to stretching out cramps, the command and combat systems both booting up after several seconds. The Ivory Blade Liger growled accordingly, even as Kyle gave a near-invisible wave to Katherine, who stood on the ground with monkey wrench in hand.   
  
"Nah, she does that enough for my tastes," the silver haired pilot said with a bit of perversion to his voice.   
  
"... Bet she does it with a strap-on," the black haired pilot growled out under his breath, just low enough that it was audible but unintelligible over the frequency they were using.   
  
One after the other, the Shadow Fox and the Blade Liger stepped out of the drafted Zoid hangar, making it onto the pockmarked road that lead out of Farentown, both of their pilots completely oblivious to the fact that all Hell would likely be breaking loose beneath their feet in a matter of hours.   
  
"How long`s our shift?" Mark asked, shifting the conversation to a slightly more appropriate subject, even as a dark green Rev Raptor went catapulting through the air outside of the city, two cannon bolts plugging it in the chest before it even left the pilots` sight. "... Glory hog," the younger of the two complained under his breath.   
  
"Twelve hours, I think," Kyle answered, nowhere near as eager to spend virtually all of the day cramped into his Zoid`s cockpit, fighting for his life and doing things of that nature.   
  
"... _Joy_."   
  
  
A flash of seering red underscored by a blaze of hypnotic blue shocked through the room, jarring Sarah Obscura out of her senses and out of the world of the endless files and orders she had been reading and making over the course of the night.   
  
Thanks to a recommendation from Steven and Leon, Harry had basically left her in charge for however long the search was set to run, and much to her credit, Sarah had taken the reigns of power and literally improved things in a matter of hours. The clutter was gone from the office, things had become ordered now, but the sudden appearance of... _Something_ put a temporary halt to her work.   
  
Or to be more accurate, something and some_one_.   
  
"Hello," greeted the blue haired girl with her eyes shifting between colors, ranging from a pale red to a deep green to an especially dark shade of blue. Her skin was tanned, her clothing was that of an escapee from a mental institute and her face betrayed that her age was probably only just barely within the range of fifteen or so. Behind her stood a metallic, raptor-like dragon, measuring at least seven feet in height, not counting the added length of the tail which was curled onto the floor. The thing looked as if the word confusion had been created _exclusively_ to describe it, especially since its coloring seemed to checker between red and blue on each side.   
  
Sarah stared at the pair briefly, one brow slowly rising up. Most people would`ve probably taken to cowering under the desk in front of her by now, but instead of that, she just regarded the two with an unimpressed look on her face. To put it mildly, she had seen worse.   
  
"Blue hair, dark skin, variable eye color, trailed by an inhuman psycho and looking like an escaped mental patient. Leyla Tsun, I presume?" She said inquisitively, not sure if she should get ready to have to break the girl`s arm or not, and equally unsure as to whether or not she even could. Even if she had a tendency to get emotional when it came to her sons, and even if she preferred to avoid violence, Sarah Obscura still had a mean streak two miles wide.   
  
Not to mention about a half dozen black belts in various martial arts - only two of them self-defense oriented - to back it up.   
  
"What are you, psychic?" Leyla asked bluntly, taking the time to distance herself a few steps from the Organoid that stood frozen like a statue behind her, its chest clanging shut carelessly.   
  
"... Ask the boys back in Five Kings R&D," Sarah shrugged. "How can I help you?"   
  
"... I guess I`d be better off asking _you_ that. I came here to try and get some distance from... A few people," she said shiftily before continuing. "But since it didn`t exactly look like you guys are in the best of shape, I`d like to earn my keep and pilot a Zoid."   
  
"You`re asking me to trust someone who went insane, warped a Konig Wolf into a virtual death machine and wound up in a criminal lunatic asylum over it," Sarah bluntly replied. "Why should I?"   
  
**_ Because the little bitch got better? Yes? Hm?   
  
_** Pause.   
  
"... Please tell me you heard that too..."   
  
"That`s Borealis," Leyla replied.   
  
**_ Ain`t I cute?_** The Organoid perked, its eyes suddenly shimmering a bit.   
  
"... Right. Well... Since we seem to be a bit short on manpower and you have a relatively good record in Zoid Battles, and since you have... References, I guess I can let you on. On a few conditions though," Sarah said with the tone of a well versed business negotiator.   
  
"Such as?"   
  
"One: You will take orders from anyone above you without question unless they strike you as immoral - and killing in defense of the city and your allies is _not_ allowed into that definition," Sarah began, pausing to see Leyla`s reaction. Only a nod. She continued. "Two: You will _not_ consider yourself a step above the others just because of a Class S background and experience with a Zoid. This means that heroics are to be kept to a minimum whenever possible, bragging will _not_ be tolerated and neither will showing off."   
  
Another nod.   
  
"Three: You _will_ clean yourself up, get a proper uniform and make yourself presentable before reporting back to a superior officer, preferably myself, for assignment to a Zoid, and possibly a combat unit. Is that clear?"   
  
"Yes, ma`am," Leyla answered without a salute. Champton wasn`t exactly a place that prided itself on any national military heritage so they didn`t really have any fancy salutes or similar rituals of respect. "Where can I find the showers and a uniform though?" She asked a second later.   
  
"There`s a map out on the wall in the hallway, just watch out for the holes from last night`s attack," Sarah answered smoothly, only to speak up one last time as Leyla turned to leave.   
  
"One more thing."   
  
"Hm?" The girl sounded inquisitively, looking back at her.   
  
"What about that thing?" The woman asked, pointing offhandedly at Borealis, which was still standing there with that same cracked look.   
  
"... Oh, don`t mind him. He probably won`t be wanting to work with anyone or anything like that, but he _does_ make a good paper weight," Leyla answered casually, which caused the Organoid to slump forward again, optics seeming to shift without pupils to cast her a derogatory sideways glance.   
  
"You can _leave now_," she grit out at it. Borealis was impassive.   
  
**_ Not `til the time is right. Besides, I have to get you back for that little comment.   
  
_** Both narrowed their eyes at each other before Sarah cleared her throat, at which, Leyla promptly left.   
  
"... Don`t you have something else to do?"   
  
**_ ... Not really. Anything I can do? Mop the floors, paint the walls, make some coffee, buy cheap porn to raise the morale of the troops...   
  
_** Sarah stared blankly.   
  
It was gonna be a _looooooong_ day...   
  
  
"Ya know," he began, his mouth half-full with partially chewed food. "I don`t really get why so many people," a pause, he swallowed it down after a few more chews, then continued. "Skip on breakfast. Really, it`s _the_ most important meal o` the day..."   
  
The lady behind the counter gave only a muted nod. She was in her mid-twenties, looked a bit weathered but still full of life, and right now, she also looked full of fear. Full blown _terror_, in fact.   
  
It wasn`t every day that ruthless, homicidal maniacs walked out of the history books, clad in full piloting gear, intent on ordering food from a place that you worked in, after all. This one lacked the proper tattoo, his face was a bit narrower and his jawline a bit stronger, but the resemblance was enough to give some people nightmares, especially with the way the scene was playing out.   
  
"You have any idea why they do that?" He asked between bites of his burger, so casually that it sent chills up and down the spines of the few people who were still in the diner.   
  
"... N-no. You?" The woman asked, cringing with every word. He gave a mild, unconcerned shrug.   
  
"Nope. Their loss, far as I`m concerned. Just seems wasteful to me... Why skip out on what could potentially be the only meal of the day?" The man asked, pausing long enough to wipe a hand concealed in a plain leather glove over his mouth, then continuing to eat.   
  
"Some people are just dumb, huh?" She asked, visibly squirming in an effort to resist the urge to run away.   
  
... You`re enjoying this, aren`t you? Shadow asked bemusedly, sitting awkwardly on the bar stool next to his bondmate, an unfolded newspaper held clumsily in his razor sharp talons, opened up to the business section. A pair of reading glasses sat impossibly on the tip of his snout.   
  
"Absolutely," Kale answered, taking the last bite out of his cheese burger and then intentionally pausing to savor the taste before swallowing it down.   
  
"Sir?" The woman asked fearfully.   
  
"Talkin` to myself," he shrugged absently, taking a sip of the coffee he had ordered and then plucking bacon off of the side dish he had gotten with his burger. "Annoying habit, yanno... Kinda like my tendency to cause random property damage. Say, is there any way I could get seconds in a take out box? It`s been weeks since I actually _ate_ anything and well... Yeah, I could use the snack."   
  
You sick, depraved little bastard...   
  
The woman only nodded before turning and making a brisk walk towards the kitchen. Before she could open the door, Kale spoke up.   
  
"Oh! And be sure to bring it back yourself, otherwise I`ll have to take a steak knife and kill you, okay?!" He shouted to her with a cracked, amused smile. One could almost see Shadow`s dark blue optics shifting to give him a sideways glance.   
  
"... What? You know how shifty those diner workers can be... The last one I had to deal with almost killed me!"   
  
... Yes, true. I suppose you do have to be a bit forceful with them... Could always threaten to have my gut her four year old son like a pig, alive and screaming, Shadow replied, making sure to broadcast his Voice into the minds of each and every person in the diner. Instantly, six children finally went over the edge and broke into sobbing fits, just as glass shattered in the kitchen.   
  
"... Nahhh, Let`s reserve that for if she _takes too long_," Kale said, _just_ loudly enough to make the woman hurry up. All of a minute and a half trickled by as the Raven lookalike with a near-Hiltz-type personality sat there waiting with a cracked, bastardly grin on his face, teeth beared, eyes half-lidded, hair hanging in just the right position to selectively shadow his face.   
  
Then the door into the kitchen flew open and the woman stumbled out. One of her high heels had snapped, tears were slipping down her face and a see-through plastic container with one large helping of french fries and a bacon cheeseburger - with mayonaise, lettuice and _ketchup_, _not tomato_ - placed so neatly inside that they could probably accent a piece of furniture.   
  
She set it on the counter with a completely _fake_ smile, a nervous twitch having formed next to one soft, brown colored eye.   
  
"Now _that_ is service," Kale complimented with a smile of his own, that type that just said 'Maybe I should kill you just to hear how loudly you scream...'   
  
"By the way, do you know where any laundromats are, O pretty little waitress?"   
  
"... Down the street, one turn left, one turn right. Can`t miss it," she answered with the kind of timid tone that came from a mouse half-ready to fling itself at a chainsaw.   
  
"Hm. Pity, I don`t seem to have a wallet handy... It`s a real bitch keeping money in a flight suit and all..."   
  
"N-no, that`s quite alright. On the house."   
  
"Oh, but I insist... There`s gotta be _something_ I can pay you with," Kale trailed off absently, thoughtfully stroking his chin before nodding to himself. "Howsabout I let you live, that good enough? Yes?" He asked curiously, tilting his head to the side with another of those demented, forced grins. If the act went much longer, he would probably burst into laughter until he cried.   
  
Not like he was going to let any of these sorry bastards live to see the sun rise tomorrow.   
  
"Yessir. Thankyousir," she said a bit quickly.   
  
With that, Kale stood up and grabbed the take out box in one hand, tossing the other over his shoulder in a whimsical little wave. Shadow merely cast his glasses aside and shredded the newspaper before following suit, his mechanical footsteps leaving shallow imprints on the black-and-white, checker tiling of the floor.   
  
The door flipped open, and the two stepped outside to be greeted by the pleasant side of the Geno Maxis, its enormous feet planted in not one, but four parking places - two each. Three cars were half-crushed beneath its feet, and another minivan had been smashed in by its tail. The Zoid growled at the sight of them, even while Kale motioned for it to follow as he calmly, pleasantly waltzed down the street, take out in hand, laundry on his mind, humming the tune to an old song as he did.   
  
  
If there had been anything remotely akin to a dawn in the eternal twilight morning-afternoon of Nyx, Bit Cloud wasn`t one to notice it, mainly since he was far too focused on trying to keep the Liger from keeling over and losing power all together. It had been a limping walk from the battlefield where the trio had struck down the Geno Sniper - _how_ they had done it was still beyond his ability to comprehend, but he was starting to piece things together, bit by bit.   
  
"Don`t worry, buddy, we`ll be there soon," he said, though a thought would`ve probably sufficed. The emotion got through either way, drawing a ragged, half-conscious groan from the Liger Zero, which had since become caked right back up with snow, ash and a bit of excess grime from other things in the air, once again tarnishing its formerly brilliant color scheme.   
  
The climb up the softly etched slope that curled around the sides of the mesa was slow, but not terribly unpleasant. It was time spent resting, time where the three were allowed the chance to actually gather their wits back up without some sort of mission looming over their collective heads.   
  
Zeke was silent. Where there had once been at least a background hum, now there was only a muted snore, trailing through the back of Bit`s thoughts. The Organoid had obviously become worn with all of the stress that it had been under lately, from how it had all but given out in the canyon to how Shadow had overwhelmed him after days of keeping a Zoid, an Organoid and two people - one of which he wasn`t even bonded to - alive.   
  
All things considered, Zeke had a certifiable _right_ to sleep. So did the Liger itself, and Bit as well for that matter. Without Zeke to keep him going, the hunger from not eating for days unknown was starting to catch up with him, as was the lack of sleep and the lack of bathing. Before, he had been passingly numbed to his own body odor, now?   
  
Now, he almost wanted to vomit on himself for his own putrid stench.   
  
Finally, the Liger lumbered wearily up the last turn of the journey, stepping onto the top of the immense natural structure, coming to a stop after a few minutes more.   
  
Roc had been waiting. The First Born stood alone, directly across from them. Its wings were folded, its eyes glowing a bit dimmer than usual, and those lethal looking claws had been drawn into the main body. The enormous creature`s tail had wrapped itself haphazardly around one of its back legs, and if there were any way for the newly ash and snow covered Organoid to be described, it would have fit with the word gloomy.   
  
"... Where`s Madison?" Bit asked inquisitively, glancing around. There was a sharp pang of an emotion that would`ve been utterly impossible for _any_ organic creature to describe, and then...   
  
Roc spoke.   
  
Its true Voice was incredible, a chorus of thousands upon thousands upon _hundreds_ of thousands of seperate voices at once, yet even through the countless identifiable differences in pitch and tone, it sounded as if it was one person speaking the words out.   
  
** She has gone to ready the circumstances for your final tests...   
  
**   
In the barren wastelands, a single figure trudged towards the dome with all the determination of a heartless machine, a metallic club that weighed more than some people cast almost carelessly over her shoulder.   
  
  
** The trials which you will pass... Will not be easy ones.   
  
**  
"Rommel is **_WHAT?!_**"   
  
"It just came over the broadband! Some Raynos sh-"   
  
A flash of green light, energy melding through the floor and the ceiling and the walls all at once, collecting and combining into a sphere of emerald tinted power.   
  
  
** To succeed, is to know victory at an impossible price.   
  
**   
"Reports of my demise," echoed a smooth, stately voice as the energy suddenly shifted into the vaguest of silhouettes, identifiable as one human and one inhuman form. The voice continued though, carrying with it something... Dangerous.   
  
"Have been _greatly_, and _intentionally_ exaggerated," Vilhelm Rommel pointed out as the light faded out of existence, the green Organoid`s cables drawing from around his body and back into Spectacle`s own, the metallic creature`s chest promptly slamming shut with the clanks and clicks of metal against metal, those red eyes glimmering a bit more intuitively for the time being.   
  
"... Sir," one of the scientists managed to almost shove out, his breathing made rapid from shock and awe. "We all thought..."   
  
"I already cleared that, sub-commander. Why don`t you give me a status report now? It`s been too long since I`ve heard from the Dome, and since this is going to be my personal headquarters for a while... I do believe I have a vested interest in finding out how things have been going, now don`t I?" Vilhelm asked, his charisma alone enough to rouse the officer out of his stupor.   
  
But it hadn`t been enough to silence everyone else. Not on its own. Something else was at work here, or...   
  
Some_one_.   
  
"Well... We`ve lost the Proto Breaker and the Geno Sniper in engagements with the Liger Zero... Marshall was ambushed two or three days ago, Sandler was taken down a few hours before you arrived," the scientist explained with no small amount of haste and obedience, obedience that simply _hadn`t_ been there before.   
  
"And what do you plan to do about that, hm?" Vilhelm asked, casually walking around his underling, past the others in the room and seating himself in the scientist`s own swivelling chair. Almost instantly, it looked as if it had been tailor made for the business suit wearing, string pulling mad man with the villainous green eyes.   
  
"We were going to try and use our last Geno Saurer X prototype against it, and if that doesn`t work..."   
  
"Then you`ll use the _other_ prototype," Vilhelm finished expertly, folding his hands together and playing the crowd like they were pawns in a game of chess that he had already won within the first three moves.   
  
"Yes."   
  
"I can agree with that strategy. It seems quite logical," Rommel said before continuing. "But... Where is Brogan during all of this?"   
  
"He changed the line-up of the pilots. He wants to pilot the last Geno prototype against the Liger Zero himself," the scientist said a bit nervously. Spectacle shifted derisively, Vilhelm gave a small nod.   
  
"I`m afraid I cannot allow that to happen. Tell Brogan that if he wants to pilot a Zoid against the Liger, he can use the... _Other_ prototype. If he objects, I want his legs and arms blown out, his clothing removed and his body dropped on the ground - _alive_, if possible. The pilot we have for the Storm Breaker will do the job perfectly... Especially since, I believe, we have a guest coming our way."   
  
**  
In truth...   
  
  
** The wind howled around her, the snow crumpled at her feet and the skies themselves screamed and roared to stop, to turn back and to never set foot on the very continent again.   
  
She didn`t bother listening.   
  
Even though the very air itself could kill a man in minutes, she kept moving as if it was as clean as an orchard`s breeze in springtime. Her hair alone had probably become weighted down enough to offset a normal woman`s posture, the hundred pound club on her shoulder could`ve done even more damage, yet it was held like a feather.   
  
The expression on her face was ambiguous - at best. Neutrality, cold and simple, like that of a computer program. Not even determination that would`ve been required for someone else was etched into her void-like pinkish-red eyes, because she really didn`t even _need_ determination.   
  
For her, it was equivelent to an ordinary person making a run to the post office to pay a few bills.   
  
  
** They will probably be the hardest battles, that you will ever live to fight.   
  
**  
An uncertain piano tune rang through one pilot`s imagination. A cigarette was raised, the lankily built man in his twenties took a lingering drag before exhaling the smoke out through his mouth, the cancer stick hanging in place against the whims of gravity.   
  
He was of average height, possessing a narrow but athletic build despite himself, thin but muscular arms and lacked displayed through the confines of a tight fitting, black flight suit, the padded collar extending up around the lower half of his neck. His gloves hung carelessly from the front side pocket of the chest region of his suit, while his black flight boots seemed rooted firmly to the metal of the hangar floor.   
  
His hair was black, though faint shimmers of a dirty blonde and an impossibly dark red seemed to shimmer through in just the right lighting, while his face, narrow and long but with a redeeming quality of some kind attached to it, hidden deeply behind those eternally narrowed, but still vaguely casual, light green eyes...   
  


_ End Chapter Twenty-Seven  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** Hopefully that ending went reasonably well. If you think you`ve figured out who that pilot might be - **SHUT THE HELL UP AND DON`T SAY IT IN A REVIEW!!!**  
  
... And some people really think I`m high-strung... _Imagine that_ :p  
  
**Illidan:** I`ll give ya a hint: He hangs out with Stigma Stoller a lot :P And yeah, the Brad chapter, for me, is the highlight of the aptly dubbed Blitz Arc.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Tactical differences between you and a fictional character then. If you feel like debating the matter, I`d rather you IM me to do it than comment on it in reviews. As for Zinou... She didn`t seem to have any prob-*Promptly ripped limb from limb by a pack of rabid hyenas.* x_x  
  
**The Big Fisch:** That`s the effect I was goin` for! XD  
  
That`s all for now folks, leave a review, enjoy, Sh33p out and see ya next time! 


	28. One Last Sunset

  
  
**Foreword:** Pick your own for scenes one, two and three. The rest is as follows:  
  
Blue Man Group - Sing Along(or Hack Sign - Smallest Delight)  
Nelly - #1  
Killswitch Engage - One Last Sunset Trigun - Fool`s Paradise Killswitch Engage - One Last Sunset(again :p)  
  


* * *

**   
  
Reign of Chaos**  
One Last Sunset   
  
  
  


The engines churned to a stop, and the heavy, motion-prone armored plates that composed the Gustav`s main body`s outer hull ceased to move, just as the radio was turned off. the only thing that had been on it to begin with were the few newscasts that had managed to stay active even as the world _still_ struggled to recover from the blow that had been dealt to it. It didn`t really matter to the boy currently staring off into space as if _nothing_ even existed anymore, neither did the fact that his safety harness had just been undone.   
  
Not even the sound and sight of the cockpit flipping open with a gasp of air from the mechanism that performed it managed to capture his attentions. He didn`t even really respond to the way the woman - she had identified herself to him as Abbie - scooped him up onto one hip with a few words of her own and then climbed out of the vehicle, balancing him as if he were part of her own body weight. She had a natural talent with kids, a talent that had helped her as both a babysitter and, later on, a part time daycare giver prior to her job at Rev`s Diner.   
  
With her free hand, she reached back and yanked the cockpit`s hatch back down, slamming it shut with more brute force than someone would guess she was capable of, then setting him down.   
  
He still didn`t have a name. But he stood there patiently or obediently, or maybe even carelessly, as she straightened herself up, mumbled a few words under her breath and then reached down to take his hand.   
  
Her hand clasped around his and gave it a squeeze and a tug, gestures that went unreturned. He followed her, yes, but it was obvious that, if he even had one, his mind was elsewhere.   
  
They were mismatched in clothing as much as they were almost everywhere else. While the boy was a bit skinny for his age, Abbie had the plump curves of that girl next door most teens drooled about in their sleep. While the boy was dressed properly in the clothing he had been wearing since Harabec had virtually thrown him at her - a pair of khaki shorts and a white t-shirt that both looked as if they had cost _money_ to get, along with a pair of slightly dirtied black sneakers, she wore only a casual pair of jeans that were a bit tight, along with a light green t-shirt that was partially tucked into the rim of the jeans she had on, as well as a pair of white sneakers.   
  
The door slipped open and an explosion shocked off into nowhere out in the distance. Both jerked slightly, though she reacted more to him than the blast outside the city. Abbie had adapted surprisingly well to working herself ragged in the middle of what was just a few steps above an urban warzone, learning medical skills that should have taken her more than a few years in a matter of days, and doing it mainly through improvision with little in the way of supervision.   
  
All things considered, if she survived and if the world stabilized, Abigail Summers was probably going to be one _Hell_ of a medical expert in just about every field that she felt like involving herself with.   
  
The future wasn`t as clearcut for the boy whose grip on her hand became almost deathly tight for the first seconds after the explosion, then slackened after they had gotten inside.   
  
"At least we`re out of the line of fire now," Abbie said comfortingly, letting go after a few seconds. He still didn`t respond, walking slowly to a corner in the lobby and staying there, curling into a ball the moment he set down.   
  
Abbie watched with a slightly saddened expression, softly sighed and then walked up to the counter to check in and, as was going to hopefully become the usual custom from now on, tell the woman behind the counter to keep an eye on the nameless little boy who had seated himself wordlessly in the corner.   
  
The woman gave an affirming nod, signed Abbie in on the computer, then handed her an access card and waved her onward.   
  
And all the while, the boy just sat there.   
  
Staring off into space with those glassy brown eyes.   
  
Watching a story continue to play out in his head, one that only he could see.   
  
  
"Welcome back!" Katherine shouted with no enthusiasm. It was obvious that she wasn`t much of a morning person, giving a wave up to the returning Rev Raptor without so much as a smile. If anything, the half-smoked cigarette dangling out of her mouth and the two sizes too big monkey wrench in her hand made her look more than _slightly_ dangerous, to say the least. She wore a mechanic`s jumpsuit, along with a baseball cap she had obviously borrowed from her boyfriend`s partner, turned backwards to cover her hair, which had been bundled up a bit shorter than usual.   
  
The cockpit flipped open and a fairly tired looking Harabec Davids stood up within, waving down without much effort.   
  
"I left a few for `em!" He shouted a bit cheekily, and Kat could almost _hear_ Mark complaining about that fact.   
  
"Lovely," she mumbled under her breath before motioning to one of the unused parking spaces, just big enough for a class two Zoid like the Rev Raptor. "Park it in neutral, there any battle damage?!" She shouted back up at the cockpit, even as a banged up looking Sinker pulled in to the next hangar over, trailing smoke from several major damage points.   
  
"One of my blade stabilizers is moving a bit slower and the left leg is a bit sluggish at high speed turning!" He yelled back down to her, coaxing the Zoid into position without ever sitting back down, then using his arms to power himself up onto the catwalk that stood less than three feet up from the head of the Rev Raptor. The Zoid growled softly, the cockpit sliding shut automatically as Harabec stood himself up and stripped his gloves and flight jacket both off, tossing the larger article of clothing under one arm and holding both gloves in the same hand.   
  
"When can I check back?!" He yelled down at Katherine while another mechanic pulled in on a motorcycle-sized Molga, towing a dozen new stabilizer caps in the process.   
  
"An hour or two! Get some rest, you senile bastard!" She yelled right back at him, getting a snort and a scoff before he walked towards the ladder down to ground level, intent, most likely, on having a lunch break.   
  
  
When in the _Hell_are we going to get back to what`s actually _important_?   
  
"You complain too much. No sense in massacring an entire town if your clothes don`t have that fresh and clean scent. People remember homicidal maniacs more if they dress well," Kale commented casually, leaning back on the bench he had posted himself at. Shadow stood closer to the door, the Maxis stood outside like an obedient, if not _bored_ dog.   
  
Not like there`ll be any _survivors_ to remember us, anyway, the Organoid pointed out blandly.   
  
"Then at least they`ll die knowing that their laundromat went to good use," he replied with a shrug.   
  
You could at least have the decency to put some pants on.   
  
"Pfeh, maybe they`ll enjoy the show before they die," the utterly nude Obscura mocked with a roll of the eyes, giving a glance past his cohort and waving most pleasantly at the small crowd that had gathered on the other side of the street _away_ from the Maxis, but still in a line of sight to the laundromat.   
  
... Guess we can add public nudity to our list of crimes against humanity, huh?   
  
"Eh... More like our list of public services. Seriously, the chicks in this dump look like they could _use_ the excitement," he answered, only slightly smug in the tone he chose to use. "Not like I`m using all that power to compensate for something," he added, _very_ smug in the tone he had used that time.   
  
Eh?   
  
"You know... Like how some guys get those big-ass tires on their trucks? Or how some pilots stick the largest guns possible on their Zoids?"   
  
... I`m not exactly an expert on human psychology, Shadow shrugged.   
  
"I think I noticed," Kale answered, pausing to give another cracked smirk to the crowds in the distance.   
  
... Yanno...   
  
"I`m a sadistic, teasing, homicidal little bastard?"   
  
Something like that.   
  
"Thought so. How much longer do ya think it`ll be before the clothes finish?" Kale asked, crossing one ankle over the other knee and intentionally scooting forward, giving the people outside even _more_ to gawk at. At the same time, he swiped the magazine they had gotten on the way in from the only person who had formerly been occupying the building.   
  
No idea. Shame our new friend can`t answer.   
  
"He did enough by kindly giving us all of his change," Kale replied, opening the magazine and idly starting to read. "Too bad he didn`t last long enough to give us any conversation along with it," he added, just as Shadow took a passing glance at the slightly burnt corpse still being flung violently around in one of the industrial strength driers, the skin and hair having singed and blood having started to cake up on the glass.   
  
Too bad, indeed, the Organoid commented boredly.   
  
  
The shower had been crisp. Not as private as she would`ve liked, considering each one was seperated solely by thin wooden stalls that went up to just above head height and started from just beneath the knees, but it had still been refreshing. Her skin felt smoother than it had in over a week and the smell had been removed from her hair - which now practically _shimmered_ a few shades lighter. She practically felt, for all intents and purposes, six pounds lighter thanks to having lost all of the funk that had been collected since her battle with the Blitz Team and the subsequent arrest that had followed.   
  
Her clothes had changed for the better as well. There`d been, thankfully enough, one remaining uniform that had actually fit her admittedly petite body size well enough to call her own. From the wear of a criminally isnane mental patient to an outfit that resembled the standard Republican uniform with different colors and a lack of the large shoulder pads. A tight but functional long sleeved white undershirt, a sleeveless black overshirt and matching fatigue pants, with a slightly heavy but comfortable utility belt and glossy black boots that felt like the wearer was walking on a cloud.   
  
The last part of the ensemble, which bore a Champ Corporation logo emblazened over the heart, were a pair of thin but durable gloves, the kind worn by bikers and Zoid pilots alike. Having no real need for them yet, Leyla hadn`t bothered putting them on, cramming them into the pockets of her pants before straightening up and putting her hair into a less-than-perfect ponytail.   
  
_ "Not my old jumpsuit,"_ she thought to herself while exiting the locker room and heading out into the hallway, making a byline for the nearest elevator in the process. _"But it`ll do."_   
  
The doors slid open, two men and a woman in similar outfits to the one that Leyla was wearing stepped out, each of them looking as if they`d just been put through a meat grinder. They barely even acknowledged her existence, let aloone take note of the fact that they had never seen her before and she was already wearing a uniform.   
  
The four passed by each other and she went into the elevator, the metallic doors sliding shut once more after she keyed in the button for the eighteenth floor.   
  
There was a brief sensation of moving upward while standing still, one that left her to remember how swiftly her old Konig Wolf had been able to move. Once you pilot a Zoid like that, elevator sickness became little more than a distant memory, if _that_. The feeling ceased as quickly as it had hit, then the heavy doors slipped open once again, leaving the sight of the hallway to hit her like a ton of bricks all over again.   
  
The damage from the brief attack of the previous night was still on more than a few people`s minds, as evidenced by how many off-duty mercenaries, refugees looking to pay for their keep and permanent soldiers had gathered around everything from canned drink machines to water coolers, the topics of conversation having basically been limited to the recent, albeit most likely temporary, change of command, the fact that the world was going down the toilet and the attack itself.   
  
Leyla ignored them. They ignored her. Those who didn`t, she gave only a passing greeting, continuing on her way without ever stopping for more than a few seconds as she trekked her way down the vast, not-so-empty corridors of the fortress, passing by more than a few makeshift refugee areas where citizens or even off-duty troops had grabbed sleeping bags, mattresses, blankets, pillows and whatever else they could use and converted them into places for grabbing some much needed shut-eye.   
  
She ignored them too, but was still careful to avoid stepping on anyone who hadn`t set themselves up out of the way enough.   
  
Finally though, she arrived at something she _didn`t_ ignore, namely the door into the private office that was usually occupied by either the late Jerry Champ, or more recently his only relatively healthy son, Harry.   
  
Without bothering to knock, she took the knob in hand, turned and pushed it, forcing the weighty, oak door open with little effort and finding herself greeted by an eyebrow raising sight that made about as much sense as your typical Blitz Team victory.   
  
"... Do I really wanna know?" She asked with no real military discipline stepping inside to the visual of Borealis standing on one foot with his tail laying haphazardly over a piece of paper on the side of the desk.   
  
"I told him to make himself useful, I don`t really care how," Sarah shrugged, lifting the Organoid`s tail long enough to move the paper out of the way and replace it with another document. Borealis just stood there blankly as if his mind had decided to make a beer run without the rest of him.   
  
_** You DID say I was good as a paperweight, and SHE didn`t agree with me supplying the troops any free, sub-standard, B-level porn...   
  
**_ Leyla stared blankly. Sarah regarded her with one of those rare looks that sat somewhere between maternal, annoyed, militaristic and resigned to fate all at once, promptly looking to the Organoid before speaking again.   
  
"There`s mopping that needs to be done out on the Whale King pads," she said bluntly.   
  
_** ... Fah, you don`t make good company EITHER!**_ Borealis shot back with something that looked vaguely akin to an expression of sticking his tongue out and blowing a raspberry at her, promptly taking off into a gleeful, waddling jog out of the room, the door slamming shut behind it since Leyla hadn`t ever bothered shutting it herself.   
  
The girl stared at the door and then looked back to Sarah, who had a slight twitch in one eyebrow, but managed to ignore any attention to it while speaking up again.   
  
"I looked over the inventory of available Zoids we have that fit the control and handling profile of a Konig Wolf. I was able to find six regular Command Wolves, one AC, an IS-type, a UC and a Climber Wolf. All but the IS have pilots who are either on rotation, injured or discharged for some reason or other. Three belong to squads, the IS is in need of repairs to its smoke projectors and the Climber is set to undergo maintenance sometime later today."   
  
"Do I have a choice in which one I`ll pilot?"   
  
Sarah nodded.   
  
"Can I take a look at them first?"   
  
"Go for broke," the older woman said with a shrug, briefly having to look around the desk before grabbing a card that had formerly been hidden under the keyboard for the desktop computer. She offerred it up a second or so later before explaining.   
  
"This is your ID card, but it isn`t fully activated yet. When you pick your Wolf, give it to the officer in charge of assigning pilots to Zoids, he`ll provide you with the proper registration for it and any paperwork you may need to fill out."   
  
Leyla gave a nod and took the card in hand, promptly wheeling around on her heel and leaving.   
  
She didn`t bother to say good-bye, even if she _was_ more than passingly impressed with how Obscura was handling herself. She had adapted to commanding an infrastructure that she had _no idea_ how to work, and she had done it in under twelve hours. On top of that, she had done it _well_.   
  
Leyla Tsun only hoped she would adapt to being a _bit_ player in that infrastructure half as well.   
  
Card in hand, she took off down the hallway, intent on doing just that.   
  
  
Gold slashed magnificently through the dry air of the desert in the afternoon sun. In an instant, a hapless Sinker had been given three new vents all along its topside, each of which had slagged around the edges, exposing the internal workings, which themselves had been damaged.   
  
"Eighteen. Bitch."   
  
"No."   
  
The Sinker wobbled uneasily, lost control and exploded after a few seconds, just as a black-and-gold canine Zoid touched down on its forepaws, balanced a bit awkwardly but recovering with ease.   
  
"_Now_, it`s eighteen."   
  
"Awww, jealous?"   
  
An even more unlucky Rev Raptor split in half less than a second after the insult had been made, a dangerous blade enveloped in a fiery yellow glow having struck it with enough force to rip it from where it had been standing. The Zoid shrieked as that same blade forced through its admittedly thin armor and wreaked havoc upon its insides, leaving the two seperated halves to crash down into seperate locations at the same time, both exploding instantly.   
  
"Tied. Newb."   
  
"... Your mom`s a whore and your dad`s an insurance salesman."   
  
"... Bah. Newb."   
  
"Meh. Chinny-with-no-comeback-skillz."   
  
A friendly Command Wolf dropped into view, firing its back mounted cannons almost reflexively, only to fly off of its feet from an impact to the side. A Red Horn had been the culprit, ramming the unfortunate Zoid in the midsection before going in for the kill, only to cease any and all movement after a blistering hail of blaster fire.   
  
"My _work_ does _my_ talking."   
  
"I`ve seen sixth graders do better."   
  
The Command Wolf staggered back up, only for the pilot to let out a yell of surprise when a Helcat, smoking from battle damage, leapt through the air, claws beared without a sound, guns having been blown off at some point during its participation in the battle. A series of pulse lasers and a single shot from a triple impact cannon offset its momentum and blew holes right through it, causing the Zoid to crash to the ground on the cockpit, the AI system in control promptly crumpling like a tin can from the Helcat`s own weight.   
  
"Denial must be fun, huh?"   
  
"Say`s the guy who gets raped by a strap-on wielding mechanical super bitch."   
  
"... Least I actually _get something_, Mister I-date-a-nun."   
  
"And I`ll put that _nun_ over your _super bitch_, any day o` the week!"   
  
Another Sinker went sky high in a bad way, its only remains being the armored stabilizer caps that fell from above the battlezone with enough force to bounce from the impact. The wounded Command Wolf slowly began to limp away, covered almost obssessively by the Ivory Blade Liger, which had taken up a guard position in front of it a few seconds earlier.   
  
"I`ll remember that comment when I`m on cloud nine, _newb_!"   
  
Another Rev Raptor hit the ground on its back, a Strike Laser Claw embedded in its chest as an AZ30mm laser vulcan gun shifted to the right, putting eight or nine bolts of focused plasma through the cockpit of a Gunsniper that had strayed a bit too close to the _real_ fighting.   
  
"Seems like the attacks`re thinning now..."   
  
"Oh! _Oh_! You admit defeat! Concession accepted, _**NEWB!**_"   
  
"... Shut up, dude."   
  
"**_NEWB NEWB NEWB!_**"   
  
"... **_SHYADDAP!!!_**"   
  
The fighting that had formerly been so fierce between enemies now took something of a distant back seat for the Suicide Team. It had been raging off and on almost constantly ever since they had arrived in Farentown, and most of the time it was utterly futile. The attacks never did more than to damage a few of the defending Zoids - though one or two had actually caused serious _casualties_, and they only really succeeded in getting themselves destroyed.   
  
What they _did_ manage to accomplish though, was psychological damage. Not a full blown victory by any stretch, but it was still _highly_ effective at consuming resources by forcing the defenders to stay out for prolonged amounts of time, in combat, which in turn wore away at what discipline a bunch of civilian tournament participants and a few members of the Guardian Force could muster, sapping them of energy and emotional resillience. As a result, they spread their discontent through word of mouth, lowering morale.   
  
They also tended to make more and more mistakes with the longer they were kept in the fray. Reflexes, instincts and thoughts became either overly pronounced or horribly sluggish and unconcerned, shots hit into the city and people were injured. That took a toll, both emotional and literally since it meant more people wound up in the already choked, overloaded hospitals, while debris had to be cleared and fires put out, which _also_ took away from efforts to keep power and water running.   
  
In short: It was attrition in action, and only two pilots seemed even passingly immune to its effects when in the field.   
  
Of course that was probably because they had their heads too far up their asses to notice, but hey...   
  
"**_NEWB!_**"   
  
"**_SHUT! UP!_**"   
  
Take what you can get...   
  
  
Movement.   
  
In his former body, it had been a task that had been so difficult it was almost impossible. Be it from the drugs and countless diseases that he had tainted himself with to the shackles that had kept him bound for little over three and a half years, to the suffocating darkness that had driven the last inklings of hope from his mind, it had never been easy once he had tried - and miserably failed - to take the reigns of power.   
  
Now though, it was with such an ease that, if he had never been so ruined in the first place, it would have terrified him. Where before, he wouldn`t have been able to move more than a few pounds with his entire arm, now, one leg could easily plow through hundreds of thousands of tons of rock. Close to a million tons pressed against every inch of his miles long body, but he could still move through it as if it were a shallow pool of water.   
  
It was a sensation of empowerment that most people would have probably envied, but the truth was that it was alarming as well.   
  
The drugs had stopped flowing into him now. Even if they hadn`t, their effects would`ve been minimalized by now. Change had occurred, his old body had become his new brain, little more than a shell with which to hold his personality. Where skin had originally covered him, dotted only by scant diamond-shaped patches of silver, now the reverse was true. Where his brain had originally needed the helmet that covered his head from the brow up, now it served only as an unneeded helmet.   
  
Slowly but surely, his original brain - now converted almost entirely to the types of cells that made up a Zoid Core - sent commands through his massive body, forcing it tirelessly onward. The world loosened and collapsed behind him, setting off a massive chain reaction that would soon reach the surface...   
  
Thoughts of the surface reminded him of his mission. It had been a vague final order from his caretakers, to go out and annihilate Farentown. Then he would be free. Absolutely free. If he tried to deny them of that order, something would trigger and his body would take to moving completely upon its own, ignoring his commands as if he wasn`t even giving them.   
  
A slow, somewhat demented grin forced its way onto his brain, beneath the useless oxygen mask that was only barely hanging in place on what had once been his face.   
  
So he would follow orders.   
  
Just this once. Then he would be free.   
  
Free to make use of the body that had been so wonderfully provided to him by his caretakers. Free to indulge his every sense in any way he wanted. Free to kill, maim and destroy _anything_ in his path.   
  
For the first time since he had learned of the three sexual diseases that he had been infected with, and for the first time since he had discovered his countless addictions to stimulants of every kind, the creature that had once been Henry Rommel felt an emotion that could best be described with one word.   
  
_ Glee.   
  
_ The world began to shudder and rumble around him. His direction changed, his course became set.   
  
He was going to erupt right into the city and tear it down from the inside out.   
  
  
"You the new owner?" A voice asked from behind, drawing the blue haired girl out of her reverance and causing her to give a passing glance over her shoulder with a smile.   
  
"Yeah. I just got my registration for it approved by Commander Isaacs," she answered, turning back to the light blue Command Wolf IS, her smile fading back to a look of amusement. It was only the second time in her life that she had ever been the pilot of a Zoid, but it _was_ the first time that she had actually _owned it_, for herself. While there had been a few issues in getting her hands on the IS, due to the Commander`s hesitation over her record for attempted murder of the Blitz Team, it had legitimately become hers. She would have to pay off the costs of ownership and maintenance by working for the Champ Corporation through the crisis that was gripping the planet, but it was still _hers_.   
  
"Feels pretty good," she added with a shrug after the pause that followed her answer. The man behind her gave an audible shrug and took a few steps forward, smoking a half-ashed cigar that looked as if he had been puffing on it off and on for the better part of a week. He was an inch or two shorter than what Leyla remembered of Bit Cloud, still easily taller than her, but that wasn`t exactly saying much given her relatively petite stature. His hair was obviously colored from an old bleach job, soft white near the tips but black from there down, kept short and either easy to manage or easy to forget about, the jury was still out on that.   
  
"I knew the former pilot of that Zoid," he said bluntly, reaching one gloved hand up to set his glasses back against his face. He had the look of someone who could blend into virtually _any_ setting, from a pack of nerds to a violent rap concert, while his skin had a pale tint to it that looked like he could sunburn in a matter of minutes if he wasn`t careful.   
  
"Um..."   
  
"His name was Daniel Broderick Adams. Thirty-three, senior commanding officer of the Hacksaw Squad, nicknamed Dabroda, `cause it pissed him off."   
  
There was an uneasy pause as Leyla tried to think of a way to politely excuse herself from the man`s presence, more than passingly unnerved by how casually he described his friend, who was obviously no longer of the living variety.   
  
"Went K.I.A. `cause he ran outta ammo and the smoke projectors failed to work properly in the middle of a battle about two weeks ago, I think around when this whole mess started."   
  
"Sorry to hear that," she said, tucking her arms behind her back and speaking up again. "I`ll let you be, since you seem to want some privacy with my... _His_ Zoid."   
  
"Eh... Don`t bother," he shrugged, taking another drag off of his cigar. "Heard about your arrival and came to make an offer, not muddy the water."   
  
"An offer about what?" She asked, relieved to finally move _away_ from the topic of a man who had died piloting _her_ new Zoid.   
  
"You`re new `round here, heard you`re an ex-Class S pilot and as of right now," a pause as he exhaled smoke out of the side of his mouth, away from the girl next to him. "Hacksaw Squad`s got an opening."   
  
"You`re here to recruit me? Or do you just want the Zoid?" Leyla asked, skeptically giving him a sideways glance.   
  
"You," he answered with another shrug.   
  
"Count me in then," she said, lowering her arms from her back and extending a hand his way.   
  
"Welcome to Hacksaw Squad then, Private...?" He waited for an answer, casually shaking her hand with the same one he had used to push his glasses back into position.   
  
"Leyla Tsun. You?"   
"Lieutenant Travis Paxton."   
  
  
"Well, _you_ look like you`ve had a _fun_ day," Kat pointed out blithely, tossing Mark`s cap onto the dashboard before jumping into the Gustav, her gloves already in the midst of being yanked off by the time she started pulling the seatbelt into place.   
  
"Two childbirths without painkillers. One operation without anesthetics," Abbie replied with a near twitch, her grip tightening on the controls almost instantly in the process.   
  
"Ouch," Kat said, looking over her shoulder to find the nameless boy sitting in the center of the back seat, strapped in snugly, his hands folded over his lap, his legs limply dangling over the edge and his eyes staring straight ahead as if he were blind.   
B "No improvement, huh?" She asked with some hesitation, looking back ahead and resisting the temptation to kick her feet up onto the dashboard. Bad enough how Abbie would react to such a thing, with how protective of his Gustav Mark was, Kat didn`t even _want_ to know how _he_ would respond to learning about someone doing that.   
  
Not that she couldn`t crack him over the head with a monkey wrench or something, but still.   
  
"No. He`s actually willing to walk around on his own and feed himself now," Abbie answered tiredly, getting ready to put the Gustav in reverse as the tremors kicked off all over again. The ground rattled, but only briefly. By the time either could comment, it was over. For the moment.   
  
"Those are _really_ starting to annoy me," she grumbled out.   
  
  
The last remaining enemy Rev Raptor let out a shriek, collapsing to the ground with its left arm completely severed, the point of impact searing hot from the energy involved. The Blade Liger touched down not far away, blades folding up onto its back as Kyle wiped his brow. It was late in the afternoon now, the sun had begun to set, the fighting was apparently over.   
  
It had lasted for ten minutes shy of twelve hours. 8:30 in the morning to 8:20 in the afternoon.   
  
There weren`t any clouds in the sky as twilight began to take effect, even as the remaining defenders, numbering in at roughly ten Zoids, almost all of which were pockmarked with battle damage. Even the Shadow Fox and the Ivory Liger had taken a bit of a beating, both showing numerous minor scratch and burn marks, as well as more than a _few_ dings and dents in their armor.   
  
"I dunno about you," Mark began with a sigh, leaning back in the cockpit chair and removing his hands from the controls. "But I think I could eat a horse."   
  
"Pig," Kyle commented, cracking his knuckles and toes, then popping his neck. None of the other pilots were bothering to join the conversation.   
  
"I haven`t eaten in twelve hours."   
  
"Neither have I."   
  
"... I don`t have Bishounen Metabolism," Mark grumbled annoyedly before continuing. "Unlike _you_, I gotta eat more than a dainty _fig leaf_ to keep from dying of starvation."   
  
"Pig."   
  
"... Bah."   
  
The other remaining Zoids slowly turned away, lumbering tiredly towards Farentown, even as another light tremor kicked off.   
  
"There it is again," Kyle pointed out. "Is this dump _always_ like this?"   
  
Mark shook his head. The Shadow Fox almost mimicked the action.   
  
"No. It`s only been like this the past week or so."   
  
The shaking worsened slightly, both Zoids had to spread their legs out a bit to keep their balance, even as the others kept going on. By now, the Fox and the Liger were the only things left outside the city.   
  
"I don`t like this," Mark began. "It`s not stopping this time..."   
  
It worsened again, this time picking up to a full blown jerk as ground started cracking beneath their Zoids` feet. The Liger stepped forward, the Fox hopped to the side, and the ground schismed where they had formerly been standing, just as several loud rumbles began to echo from beneath the surface.   
  
And then the schism repeated itself, forming a crack that ran parralel to the one that now stretched beneath the Liger, enclosing the Shadow Fox between them. This time it was louder, as if the entire area was groaning in pain. In an instant, each crack began to widen, the ground between them starting to slip and loose its density.   
  
"Get away from there, newb," Kyle ordered, keeping his calm despite the situation. The Liger echoed his words by stepping completely away from the schism, but the Shadow Fox remained in place, its pilot seemingly oblivious to what was happening around them.   
  
"Kyle."   
  
"_Move_, you _idiot_!"   
  
"_Look_."   
  
The Fox shifted its head in indication, drawing the silver haired pilot`s attentions towards the city. The lights were coming on, but at the same time, the buildings that ran within the line were starting to sag, but closer to the center of Farentown, other buildings were starting to get taller, tilting ever so slightly as if being pushed from below.   
  
"What the _hell_..."   
  
And then the ground between the cracks did exactly as Kyle had feared.   
  
The Shadow Fox let out a synthesized howl as the dirt and rock gave way around it, caving in for miles forward and back, in and away from the city at the same time, stretching to an initial width of almost a half of a mile, sloping downward as the trench began to form. The Fox almost reflexively fought to stay grounded, trying to hold its position only for the position _itself_ to go slipping downward.   
  
Mark took over from there, urging the Zoid into a series of fast, long jumps, broken only sparingly for several smaller instances of having to try and regain its balance from flawed landings, but eventually managing to force his way back up onto the solid ground, just as the trench seemed to finish forming.   
  
And then they heard what sounded like the twisted cry of an angry Ultrasaurus, precursing the roars of collapsing concrete and twisting metal, underscored by the sounds of glass shattering in every direction as the buildings in and around the center of Farentown lifted ever higher into the air and came crashing right back down.   
  
Explosions ripped up, lights started going out and the skies began to darken over the city from rising smoke, but the only sounds that Marcus Harlock and Kyle Mazemia could think to register were guns firing, screams over broadband and the unearthly shriek of something that had risen from beneath the planet itself for the express purpose of bringing down one of the last refuges of civilization.   
  
Debris flew high, but something black and long moved up with it, a pair of fiery, orange optics, each big enough to outsize a Gojulas, making themselves visible from atop what looked like a serpent`s head, briefly standing tall with another shriek before starting to lower like a tree being felled, vanishing into the concrete jungle of Farentown`s newly burning cityscape.   
Seconds went by, both members of the Suicide Team looked on with sagging jaws and wide eyes, barely able to believe what they were seeing.   
  
Mark broke their reverence for the newly formed _holocaust_ first. His words were short and to the point.   
  
"Ho_ly **shit**_..."   
  


_ End Chapter Twenty-Eight  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** Sorry if the ending seemed a bit rushed, I just wanted to get through to it :P I`ve been putting off the next few chapters ever since Kale got the Geno Maxis so... Yeah. Time to get it over with, yes? >_>;  
  
And is it just me, or is it harder to write AHBL with OCs than with canon characters? *Mutter.*  
  
**Illidan:** Yes, Rommel knows about Madison and Roc. He and Specular picked up on their presence during the trip to the Dome, I just didn`t get the chance to mention it. As for Kale... Well, only time will tell, but right now, he seems to be on hiatus from killing everything in sight long enough to grab a bite to eat, do some laundry, terrorize some hapless townsfolk...  
  
You know, a good, proper working-vacation! :D  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Have fun wracking your brain till it hurts, cuz I ain`t revealing it until I finish with the Hellwalker Arc... And god damnit, ** I`M FINISHING THE HELLWALKER ARC FIRST!** *Said more to the characters, than the readers.* Also glad you liked the scene with Kale and Shadow XD And as an aside, about Leyla...  
  
**JOY! I ACTUALLY FOUND A NICHE FOR THE LITTLE ANCIENT ZOIDIAN BITCH!** *Rolls around, dies, lives, cackles, dies again, prances about as a zombie, dives out of an airlock and explodes like a super nova. Glee.*  
  
As you can hopefully tell, I`m rather enthused :P  
  
Anyway, that`s all for now, expect the next chapter/s when I finish `em and Sh33p out, see ya next time!  
  



	29. Evacuation

  
  
**Foreword:** 'Evacuation,' from the Armageddon soundtrack, suits just about all of this chapter, bar scenes five and seven, the proper songs for which are listed below:  
  
Linkin Park - Intermission  
Hack Sign - Aura(Regular or Evil versions, both`ll work)  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Evacuation  
  
  
  


The third wall of a nearby building ripped away, the rest of the structure threatening to collapse as Katherine Takahori sought to work her magic on the unwilling connections between Gustav and trailers, knelt down with nothing but elbow grease, determination and desperation to fuel her.   
  
She was in that situation for the simple reason that, all of two minutes ago, all _Hell_ had broken loose in the center of the city that was Farentown. _Something_ had blown up out of the ground and started levelling everything in sight with all the precision of a blindfolded pitbull trapped in a room with its weight in mice. Buildings were falling and burning all over the place, the ground had collapsed into a miles long trench that lead out of the city and it was really a miracle that she hadn`t been smashed to a bloody pulp several times by now.   
  
That miracle was mostly due to the thick armor inherent to the Gustav, which made it even _more_ absurd, in Katherine`s eyes, that she was trying to rig up _both_ trailers from the _outside_.   
  
"If I ever get my hands on Mark`s sorry ass again..."   
  
She trailed off, biting against her tongue as she finished setting the locks together and ran out from behind the Zoid, hauling it towards the open cockpit and wiping grease off on her jumpsuit the entire way.   
  
Abbie and the nameless boy were both waiting for her when she threw one hand onto the rim and used it for leverage, jumping off of the ground with the stance of an olympic athlete, only to crash into the seat almost sideways.   
  
"_Drive_!"   
  
Abbie only winced at the sound of another building collapsing, doing her best to maintain a level head as the cockpit slid shut. It had been her idea to go back and get the trailers rigged up in the first place, though she hadn`t said _why_ until a few seconds after parking close enough to connect to them.   
  
The engine churned and rumbled, the heavy wheels pulled to life and the Gustav began to move forward, crashing through a small pile of debris but continuing onward regardless. Abbie drove on the wrong side of the road, breaking every speed limit that the heavy thing could manage, but there was little chance that it would actually _matter_ now.   
  
"Where are we going first?" Kat asked, still wiping her hands off, ignoring the sweat that trickled down her face.   
  
"The hospital."   
  
"... _What_?"   
  
There was a disbelieving silence between the two women, punctuated by bursts of gunfire and explosions ahead of them, and then Abbie spoke up.   
  
"I can`t let those people die. They`re helpless," she said, and meant it. There was little hope behind her words, she was too focused on keeping the Gustav from running into a building to a try and feign any right now.   
  
"_They`re already dead_," Kat almost shouted, slipping into a cold logic. "They were all _screwed_ the moment that thing came up, if the building hasn`t collapsed on them, their power`s probably gone out by now!"   
  
"... I can still save some of them."   
  
"At what _cost_? We don`t have any supplies with us right now! We`ll be hard pressed to survive even if we pick up people who _aren`t_ injured, let alone people who _are_."   
  
Abbie tried to ignore her. Kat only snorted with an expression that was more often used by her deceased brother.   
  
"Don`t make me _force you_ to see things my way."   
  
That finally drew her attentions away from driving, but if she was going to make a response, she never got around to it.   
  
"I can agree with your logic, Katherine," a third voice said from behind, as lifeless as a corpse and as subtly venomous as a spider bite. "But if you threaten her again, I`ll have to kill you."   
  
Neither woman could speak, and Abbie could only barely manage to shift her focus back to the road as Kat looked back over her shoulder, spotting the nameless boy. His eyes, as dark as burnt red wood, had finally gained focus, settled onto her as if they were a pair of laser cannons threatening to drill holes through her skull.   
  
It was a look she had only seen from a few people in her lifetime, and it was a look that she instantly knew _not_ to question or argue against, if only because doing so removed any real guarantee of her survival.   
  
Without another word, she swallowed and turned back around, rigidly sitting up and gathering her wits. Abbie spoke first, seemingly ignoring what had just happened.   
  
"Since saving the hospital patients is out of the question, we`ll just have to pick up anyone we can find in the streets. Did you manage to secure those empty containers?" She asked dimly, knowing the answer already.   
  
"Yeah. We could probably get a hundred people, if they were willing to cram together."   
  
"Good."   
  
More gunshots rang out, and the miniaturized evacuation kicked off with a literal bang as two or three more buildings crumbled to dust near the center of the city.   
  
  
"_Holy Hannah_!" Came the cry over the broadband, only to cease with the beginnings of a gunshot followed by a scramble of static before another speaker came on.   
  
"It got Mike! It got Mike! _Fall back_!"   
  
_ "This is nuts,"_ he thought darkly as the second voice was silenced in much the same way as the first. It was bad enough that the city was _burning_, the power was also out and there was literally _nothing_ he could do but make a byline through the streets in a Zoid that was too wide to even manuever properly without tearing into the buildings on either side.   
  
"Hello?! _Can anyone hear me_?! _Is anyone even left_?!"   
  
"Calm down! Gimme your location, I`m on my way!" Harabec shouted back, trying to calm the other down. It was absolutely futile. As the Rev Raptor rounded another corner with such precision that most high performance Zoids would`ve toppled over, he heard a sound akin to glass shattering, audible for less than an eighth of a second before the comm went dead.   
  
"_Shit_," he muttered out, slowing the Zoid down as he approached another turn.   
  
He had been fortunate enough to have been outside the city when it had all started, having taken his Zoid out for a mix of a run and a patrol on one of the lesser guarded sides. As a result, he had been one of the last to make it back into the city, among the _few_ who had had the courage to actually try going back in the first place.   
  
"Anyone left out there?" He asked, not exactly expectant of an answer. It was almost a relief that he didn`t get one.   
  
The Rev Raptor stopped all together, bending forward and giving him the chance to get a glimpse down the next street.   
  
The only sight to see was something thicker than the Zoid itself was tall, swinging in like a baseball bat or a whip and passing through century old buildings like a hot knife through butter in the process.   
  
"Aww, _Hell_..."   
  
With little to guide him other than reflexes and the experience that had honed them, the Revered Raptor tightened his grip on the controls and guided his Zoid into a series of sideways jumps, shattering glass and concrete with every rebound from the sides of the two buildings that had formerly hidden it, both of which promptly _snapped_ like twigs as the attack passed right through them, echoed by an unearthly howl.   
  
Thousands of tons of debris threatened to come down all around him when he touched down, but reflexes kicked in once again, and before the dust had even started to rise around the Rev Raptor`s bladed feet, it had begun to sprint forward, outpacing the collapse by scant yards, only to turn a corner with an awkward jump at the last second, moving away from where the attack had come.   
  
Dust and rubble streaked by in a tidal wave behind the Zoid, which hopped straight up and spun around in mid-air. If not for the fact that it had made it onto one of the main roads, the action would`ve most likely ripped numerous chunks out of the structures to either side.   
  
Another shriek poured into his ears, filling his thoughts with a sense of impending doom that was only barely fought back by the stubborn determination of age and sheer, unbridled _spite_.   
  
"I ain`t dyin` `til I`m good `n` senile," he growled out, taking another look around before sparing a glance at his scanner.   
  
Whatever was leveling the city, it was large enough to outsize all of the other blips on the screen. Considerably.   
  
  
The Gustav churned to a stop in front of what had once been an ordinary apartment building, though the upper levels were now either completely gone or blazing like the mid-day sun with fires that could probably scorch the paint off of the Gustav`s armored hide.   
  
"Think anyone`s actually still alive in there?" Kat asked hesitantly, resisting the obvious urge to gawk at the entire scene playing out around her. While they were mostly save from anything short of every building within a hundred feet of the Gustav collapsing, it didn`t take away from the horror of the situation unfolding all over the city.   
  
"I think that just answered your question," Abbie replied as several people, all of them dirtied from soot and two or three of them bleeding from minor wounds, came running out, their apparent leader bylining for the Gustav`s cockpit.   
  
"Go to the back, the containers have an opening on either side!" The green haired woman ordered with a shout, hoping that the sound would reach the man. For emphasis, Katherine partially stood up and waved towards the back.   
  
"There should be a loudspeaker input, just right of the steering," the nameless boy pointed out from the back, and true to his words, Abbie finally noticed that there was a handheld, button operated microphone on the dashboard. She had never actually bothered to take note of the fact that it even existed.   
  
"Oh," she mumbled out as Kat grabbed the thing and repeated the orders without pause. The people, who had formerly been screaming for the cockpit to open, promptly took off towards the trailers, and after a quick glance at the rear view monitor confirmed that they had made it in, Abbie pressed the accelerator once again. Thoughtlessly, she gnawed on her inner cheek and turned the heavy freight hauler down another street, going on instinct in a bid to find a way out of the city that had, in a matter of minutes, become an absolute _warzone_.   
  
  
"**_SOMEBODY HE_**-"   
  
Static.   
  
To say the least, Marcus Harlock had never liked the sound of static, because usually it was even noisier than his grandfather could be when recounting tales of his life in the Republican army before his 'good for nothing' son went and immigrated into the neutral territories - and to say the least, that old fart was _loud_.   
  
In this case though, the static was more than just annoying, it was also unnerving. To hear a voice screaming for aid, then suddenly have it blip out of existence and be replaced by the grating screech of static, underscored by the sounds of countless fires and explosions?   
  
Most people would`ve been terrified enough to try and run away. Unfortunately for Mark, he didn`t have the common sense, let alone the survival instinct that would`ve fueled it if he did.   
  
"Always wondered how we`d live up to the name," Kyle commented, about as idly as a death row inmate with no hope for survival. "Think Abbie and Kat made it out?" The older of the two asked a bit too casually for Mark to do anything but gawk at as the two carefully guided their Zoids through the debris-ridden trench that had knifed through the city.   
  
"I`m more worried about Beck," he answered dryly. "Knowing that old nutcase, he`s probably in the thick of things trying to either help people or fighting with whatever the hell`s doing this."   
  
"And the girls?" Kyle asked again, bringing the Blade Liger to start climbing one of the steep walls. He was obviously intent on getting at least a _bit_ of cover.   
  
"... I don`t know. Abbie`s got too big a heart to just up and leave without trying to help _someone_ on her way out, and I don`t know Kat well enough to guess about her," Mark answered dimly, staying in the trench.   
  
"We`re probably gonna die," Kyle commented lazily.   
  
"Probably."   
  
"Wanna split up and try and hit that thing from different angles?"   
  
"Eh?" Mark voiced a bit dryly, stopping the Shadow Fox and glancing down at his scanner. He had seen part of whatever it was that was laying waste to the city, but only part of it.   
  
In truth, that _part_ had been more than enough for him to know that fighting it was probably futile, even in a bid to buy time for people to flee the city. The incessant roars and howls coming from where the scanner showed it to be were more than enough to further discourage him.   
  
"What`ve we got to lose?" Kyle asked, glancing down at the Shadow Fox from the cockpit of the Liger. The smaller Zoid hadn`t budged an inch, it was still standing there, orange optics glinting dangerously amid the background lighting of all the fires raging through the area.   
  
"Everything," Mark answered in short order, returning the glance without even knowing it. The Shadow Fox almost mirrored the action, growling uncertainly at the Liger.   
  
"May as well take a shot at it then," Kyle said, falsely sure of himself. Against an opponent that formed a blip almost a quarter the size of the entire _city_, it wasn`t exactly easy to be confident.   
  
"Kyle."   
  
"What?"   
  
There was a brief pause as the Shadow Fox tilted its head forward again, barrels making a brief spin before Mark spoke once again.   
  
"Stop being so fucking _depressing_, you pussy. It`s not like we didn`t survive the _apocalypse_ or anything..."   
  
"... _Bah_, just _ruin_ the dramatic feel, why don`t you?"   
  
"Dibs on blowing off the first random body part!"   
  
The Liger growled challengingly, and the Shadow Fox leaned forward.   
  
"I guess this is the part where I say something all endearing and brotherly, huh?" Kyle asked with a smirk.   
  
"No, this is the part where you acknowledge that my Zoid`s better and I make for a _far_ more compelling and masculine lead than you," Mark answered with an only _slightly_ smug tone to his voice.   
  
"Not happening, newbie."   
  
"Catch ya on the flip side, chin-bitch," the younger pilot said, cutting the conversation short as the Shadow Fox took off into a series of nimble strides, hopping through the debris of the trench and making a byline for the center of Farentown, even as the Ivory Blade Liger growled with what seemed like a mix of annoyance and resolve, blasting off down the street with the near reckless abandon that had seemingly become the Suicide Team`s trademark.   
  
  
It was starting to feel about as late as it actually wasn`t when Bit Cloud began to settle back into his seat, exhaustion guiding his slightly labored movements as he shifted his eyes to the distance, however orange tinted the cockpit monitor made it out to be. Liger growled something negative out, unsettling him, but only slightly.   
  
"You feel it too, eh, buddy?" He asked, to the Zoid, rather than the sleeping Organoid within it. The cockpit shook slightly from the nod it made in answer to his question.   
  
Roc stood not too far away, seated on its haunches in an eerily lifelike, yet stoic kind of way, those red pupils, surrounded by the blues that colored the rest of the Ancient`s eyes, having remained focused on the general direction of the city that was situated, strangely enough, upon what had been Zi`s north pole, well over a thousand or more years ago. The wobble caused by the planet`s rotation had changed that fact, but the city, lifelessly glowing a deathly red, sat there anyway, oblivious to the millions of changes that had taken place in the outside world.   
  
But as one city stood, something dark whispered to the creature`s hapless protege that another was being violently snuffed out like a matchstick being stomped upon. The instinct that seemed to alert him to it was probably a result of how far he had come through his short time in the Hell known as Nyx.   
  
"Well, nothin` we can do about it," the blonde commented dimly, not even really wanting to believe his own words, however truthful they were.   
  
** All you can do, Bit Cloud, is to rest. You would not have been able to do anything even if you _were_ in a position to help.   
  
** "Then why this supposed 'guardianship,' if I can`t even try to guard anything?" He asked for the umpteenth time. Doubts were obviously starting to crack away at the resolve of the young man, mostly born from his severe _lack_ of involvement with the world at large anymore. After all, how do you protect something if you don`t even know what`s happening to it in the first place?   
  
** Your mere presence here is all that serves to safeguard this planet from another Awakening, Bit Cloud. Considering that, I would venture to say that you are protecting everything well enough.   
  
** "... Against _what_?" Bit asked dryly, loosening his belt and giving Liger the emotional nudge to lean the seat back as far as it would go.   
  
** ... The Arch-Demon, and the countless monstrosities and mistakes that helped to bring it into being.   
  
** "Big help _that_ is," he complained. "You`re always so god damned cryptic I can barely learn _anything_ from you."   
  
** I am only cryptic, because you do not understand. Be glad that that is the case.   
  
** "Whatever..." The blonde grumbled out under his breath, getting about as comfortable as he could before settling in to go to sleep.   
  
"G`night, Liger," he said, and the Zoid growled accordingly in reply.   
  
  
An explosion rocked the entire area. The last major building to hide behind went sky high - _literally_, flying up from the ground as a missile struck into its base and the ensuing explosion vaporized the first five or six floors like a stick of butter caught in the fire of a plasma cannon. The force of the blast had been enough to do the rest, and by the time the remains of the structure finished ascending, Harabec knew that he was so far _past_ outgunned that it made the technical odds in his battle with Kale look downright _easy_.   
  
He would have thought something offensive in the general direction of the attacker, but before he could, he had to survive another attack. This time, it came in the form of a barrage of pulse cannons. Whatever kind of saurian monstrosity he was dealing with, it had noticed the mosquito-like raptor that had come for its head.   
  
Tunnel vision hit him like a brick, rugged, gloved hands tightened on the controls and his feet turned to lead on the accellerator, the unmodified Rev Raptor took to a speedy run without so much as a single step to gain momentum, going from zero to eighty-eight in one powerful stride, then gaining even more speed over the course of the next seconds.   
  
Concrete turned into super heated dust in its wake, the sides of what had once been structures housing countless prosperous buildings became scorched, molten debris, each one bearing gaping new holes from weaponry powerful enough that one hit spelled certain death.   
  
Still, the Rev Raptor kept moving, and Harabec Davids kept its manuevering as fine tuned as a Sinker at the Guylos Grand Prix, skidding to a hard stop as the building in front and to his right suddenly blew apart in a firestorm of plasma.   
  
"_Son of a bitch_!" He managed to get out, already yanking the controls accordingly while the blades deployed, glowing with bluish-white hot energy of their own, even as the Zoid itself crashed through the remaining wall of what had once been a high rise apartment building, though it had been reduced to a standing, right angled-wall that stretched up almost twice as tall as the Rev Raptor. Like glass, it shattered from the Zoid`s weight and momentum, the blades not even having much of an effect on the process.   
  
But then again, Harabec hadn`t exactly deployed them to use on a mere wall.   
  
The ground that the Raptor had been standing upon promptly vanished into a blindingly bright ball of solid white fire, though it quickly lost its strength after several seconds. Beck grit his teeth against the shock of the blast, which rattled his skull. Eyes narrowed, and with them, the triggers were pulled. Both of his cannons, plowing through the smoke and giving himself the narrowest of peeping holes.   
  
All that he could make out was the view of a _part_ of the side a _monstrous_ foot, so big that it could easily step on his Zoid like a cockroach.   
  
And that was when he heard a whistle, along with what sound like a whip ready to crack, just loud enough to sheer through the background noise of the countless fires and lesser epxlosions tearing through the city.   
  
For one of the countless times in his adult life, the reflexes of the Revered Raptor held true once again, hauling the pitifully small Zoid out of the way with a lighting sideways jump, just as something _big_ came in from behind, tearing through the ground with horrific ease before jaws so large and powerful that they could rip chunks out of a Whale King, snapped shut like a beartrap where Harabec had once been standing.   
  
At that moment, time seemed to slow down, leaving the former champion to throw an attentive, if not shellshocked glance to his right, at the exact instant that a fiery, orange optical unit started to glow a bit brighter.   
  
And in that instant, time that had seemed to slow down simply stopped.   
  
The head easily bordered on the same size as that of an Ultrasaurus, yet it was longer, the teeth sharpened, and its optics were as large as the Rev Raptor itself, if not larger. Where the Ultrasaurus could inspire hope, this thing inspired only dread. Its armored hide, now that Harabec had the time to study it, was set to a dim shade of white, with the exception of countless extra armored plates and the large, forward-set cannons that extended from where the crest of an Ultrasaurus would be, all of which paled in comparison to the covered gun barrel that he could barely make out, retracted into the monster`s throat.   
  
"What _are_ you?" He asked raspily, just as the Rev Raptor`s left, bladed foot touched down onto the concrete for a second time in as many moments. Time instantly unfroze with that singular action, and the optical unit that had set on him suddenly darkened drastically in what almost seemed like disappointment, _boredly_ raising up from the ground and pausing to regard him after the rubble had finished falling to the wayside, giving Harabec a near-full broadside view of it.   
  
The destruction of the city seemed to halt in that instant, but time didn`t stop or slow with it. Instead, it stayed the same this time, giving Harabec the precious seconds to look _it_ over, or at the least, what he could actually see of it.   
  
The neck was impossibly long, but thick and sturdy as well, with every section of its length covered in _heavy_ armor that matched the head in coloring. Between each plate, in the few naked spots that were required for flexibility, there were four turrets, each boasting a heavy, long range plasma cannon, the variety more often found on a Type Nine, combat Whale King, or the less powerful versions seen on the ZBC judge satellites.   
  
His eyes wandered, trailing down the demon`s enormous neck to its base, atop which rested a gigantic turret of a type unknown, and behind it was a battery of four _gigantic_ mortar cannons, each one ascending a bit higher than the other. At the peak of the hump at its back, another turret stood, this one much shorter and angular than the one at the base of the neck, outfitted with four thin(for a thing of _that_ size, anyway) barrels that looked eerily similar to an external charged particle gun. A second such turret extended out over the base of the tail behind it.   
  
And the tail itself was easily just as long as the neck, armed similarly but ending with a thin battery of three long range cannons mounted on a relatively slim section that tapered off to a slightly pointed tip.   
  
Exhaling sharply with a breath that he hadn`t even realized that he`d been holding in, Harabec looked forward, again gaining tunnel vision as he gulped against a feeling that could only be described as absolute _hopelessness_, blended with the thick feeling of desperation that was born from it.   
  
At the back of his thoughts, the old veteran could swear that he heard a voice, insidious and cunning, but possessed of what could be described only as absolute _ecstasy_.   
  
_ "The Hellwalker,"_ it answered maliciously, threatening to destroy every ounce of confidence that Harabec had ever gained in his years as a Zoid pilot.   
  
Swiftly and lethally, turrets in the neck adjusted their aim and fired without remorse, regret, hesitation or mercy, none of which had even the _slightest_ chance on what was rapidly becoming one of the biggest killing fields since the Guylos-Helic Wars.   
  
  
"It must have been an inevitability," Madison Rose commented with the same apathy that had been her trademark ever since she`d been Awakened.   
  
"Indeed. It must have. Tell me, why did you come, hmm?" Vilhelm Rommel asked, pulling up a chair, turning it backwards and then seating himself against it, leaned forward with his arms crossed on the back. The lighting was dull, but not pitch black like some of the other cells that he preferred to use.   
  
With a prisoner as dangerous as her, he wasn`t taking the chances of an unguarded, unmonitored cell, having instead gotten her one that boasted five cameras - one at the corner of each wall, near the ceiling, and another hidden just next to the overhead lighting. Each one had a miniature, 9mm gun mounted just beneath the lense, and all of them were trained on some part of the Guardian`s anatomy, ranging from her head to her mid-section.   
  
Somehow though, even with five lethally powered guns pointed at her, shackled and held by chains that weighed at _least_ five hundred pounds, each of them having been made from solid _titanium alloy_, and even without the hundred pound, electrified club that she wielded like a lightweight baseball bat, the raven haired Ancient Zoidian _still_ seemed uncompromisingly _dangerous_.   
  
"I don`t have to tell you anything," she said with the calm that could only come from genuinely not giving a damn either way.   
  
"Oh, but you _must_ have a reason for coming here. Really, why else would one of the most dangerous people on the planet come straight to Nyx, _especially_ after everything you`ve probably been through?"   
  
"I`m not following your train of logic, Acolyte," she answered, her arms hanging limply down the sides of the metal block that encompassed the limit to her range of movement. She could stand or she could sit, nothing more.   
  
"I _know_ parts of what you`ve been through, _Guardian_. No one can go through things of _that_ nature and come out unscathed - so why not take a vacation instead of coming _right back_ to the very place where your race made its _last_ stand?"   
  
She shrugged.   
  
"It wasn`t my idea."   
  
"Then whose was it?" He asked, maintaining a razor sharp calm, but lacking any real focus. As far as Rommel was concerned, any information he could get out of her that he didn`t already know could be put to good use in _some_ area, regardless of how trivial it seemed at the time.   
  
"I suppose you`re basically just trying to bleed information out of me the easy way, in order to keep me alive for more intense questioning - and maybe torture - later on... Or perhaps you`re just trying to get the useful bits of knowledge out of me, then you`ll seek to do to me what you did to your brother, correct?"   
  
"Perhaps, perhaps not... I haven`t made up my mind yet, after all," he casually shrugged, straightening up and almost boredly resting his head against one hand. "Do you have any suggestions, dearest Guardian?"   
  
"Raping and torturing me will be utterly useless," she began as plainly as if giving the weather. Her stance left little doubt in Rommel`s mind that she was telling the truth, and as a result, he marked it off of his list of interrogation methods. She continued.   
  
"And difficult as well, I doubt you would even be able to find a member of your organization who would find me attractive enough to maintain his arrousal. On top of that, any attempt at beating me will only serve to delay any additional information that I may or may not have, and if you outright kill me, you`ll just serve to destroy your own plans - and yourself as well."   
  
"Assuming I even could kill you," Rommel corrected.   
  
"Assuming," she agreed, only to continue. It was like a business negotiation between an emotionless machine and a chess master, each prodding the other for strengths and weaknesses to be exploited or, at the _least_, aware of.   
  
"Given the security and the way you`ve approached me, I`m going to guess that you know I`m only here because I want to be. I`m also going to guess that you want to know why that`s the case, when you`ve probably managed to figure out that I could get out of here at any time - even now - with minimal effort," she said as a statement, rather than a question.   
  
"Indeed. That`s quite the mystery. Would you care to elaborate on your reasoning, or are you going to leave me in the dark?"   
  
"By now, you know that the Liger Zero, and by default its Organoid and pilot, have been proving to be a considerable thorn in the side of your goals, first destroying a considerable aerial fleet, then a small ground army and finally two of the only three Geno Saurers in your possession. It is my short term goal to ensure that the pilot of the Liger Zero, Bit Cloud, endures the harshest struggle possible. To that ends, I`ve given him a motive to come here and face the final Geno Saurer pilot in the least advantageous circumstances possible."   
  
"Even knowing _who_ that last pilot is?" Vilhelm asked with palpable amusement. Madison only nodded.   
  
"The harder his last test, the more he will have to rise to pass it. If he wishes to become a Guardian for the planet, nothing less will work, and if possible, I would`ve found a way to make it harder," she explained with a tinge of heartless honesty that could make a political critic weep in envy.   
  
"Interesting," Rommel commented. "And when do you believe your student will be coming to 'rescue' you?" He asked.   
  
"Tomorrow. I`d venture to say around nine in the evening, by the system humans use, but with my student`s less-than-perfect timing, probably a bit later."   
  
"Anything you would prefer us to know? You know, make it even harder for him?" Vilhelm asked, more than happy to play along with the master who was currently selling out her own would-be successor for the sole purpose of forcing him to work harder. He found it deliciously ironic, in a way.   
  
"His Organoid, Zeke, is currently recovering from energy drain," she said. Rommel gave only a slight nod before speaking again.   
  
"If you weren`t such an ugly bitch, I`d probably want to marry you," he commented, standing up with a shrug and then heading to the door.   
  
"And if I cared, I`d bother to tell you to fuck off," she replied apathetically, having obviously learned at least a _bit_ about modern-day insults since she had first met Bit Cloud.   
  
  
The Gustav churned onward without pause or delay, almost skidding around another corner with trailers in tow, though each was only just barely over half-full. It didn`t exactly look as if there were any other survivors to be picked up, but there was now the issue of actually getting out of the Farentown deathtrap without being baked to death or crushed - or something _worse_ that neither Abbie or Katherine had stopped to think about.   
  
The boy had yet to speak again, though he had, at some point, taken his eyes off of Kat`s head. She had practically felt the shift, but never looked back to make sure of it. In truth, she wasn`t really all that afraid for her own life anymore, but when it came to the nervous wreck that happened to be driving the Gustav, she wasn`t quite as sure.   
  
The Zoid came to a stop after pulling through a wall of smoke, only to come a dozen or so feet short of ramming headlong into a fifty foot tall pile of burning, flaming rubble that even a Gustav wouldn`t`ve been able to plow through.   
  
"Another dead end," Abbie grumbled out with the dejected tone of someone who was just past the breaking point, but not quite far enough to really lose it. "This is hopeless..."   
  
"Just shut up and keep driving," Kat ordered sternly, heedless of the sudden feeling of eyes burning non-existent holes in the back of her head. "We`ll find a way out sooner or later."   
  
"I just hope its not _too_ late," Abbie replied, again starting to pull the Gustav into reverse.   
  
"_Thank god_," a fourth voice intruded into the cockpit, this time issuing from the front of the dash board, namely from the speaker of the communications setup.   
  
"That you, Abbie?" It asked as a shadowy, canine figure seemed to literally _appear_ atop the pile of rubble from nowhere, completely impervious to the smoldering fires burning beneath its clawed feet. The instant those orange-hued optics lit up and a synthetic-sounding growl echoed over the immediate rumbles and groans of the dying city, both women knew _exactly_ who and what it was.   
  
It was the Shadow Fox. And that meant...   
  
"`Bout damn time you showed up, newbie," Kat said with near _palpable_ relief as the other Zoid started to descend from the top of the rubble pile, with Abbie reflexively seeming to guide the Gustav back to give it room.   
  
"Traffic`s a bitch. Is Abbie in there?" Mark asked, more or less unconcerned if his insult cannon fodder`s girlfriend threw a jab or two at him. He had more important things to worry about, for once.   
  
"She`s a bit too fangirlish to bother doing anything but gawking at the moment, and the kid`s giving me a death glare, so all in all, I`d say things`re starting to look up," Kat answered, the tension in the cockpit literally _breaking_ like glass.   
  
"Areyouokay?!" Abbie finally managed to practically _squeek_ out, earning something vaguely akin to a half-muffled 'yes dear' from the other end of the comm before Mark spoke up again.   
  
"You guys need a way out?" He asked, switching the conversation to the more dire situation taking place all around them.   
  
"Yeah," Kat cut back in. "Abbie made sure we got as many people out with us as we could, but by the time we finished..."   
  
"Nice to know the end of the world can`t move some people`s hearts outta the right place," he commented, and Kat almost broke into a snickering fit at the fact that Mark had actually broken from being his usual crazed self long enough to spring for a _compliment_ of someone. In front of someone _else_ no less.   
  
In a matter of seconds, the Shadow Fox`s laser vulcan gun had lifted up out of neutral its forward-set firing stance and began to whirl around, a motion echoed by a sudden bend in the back legs. A few more seconds went by before the rubble was literally blown out of existence by a wide spread of pulse lasers, burning the already scorching debris into nothing but a quick cooling pond of concrete.   
  
The gun whirled back around and set back into place, the Fox straightened up and Mark spoke again.   
  
"There`s a trench leading straight outta the city, it`s how I got here. It`ll be a rough ride, but the Gustav can handle it. Might wanna warn your passengers, too," he explained, bringing the Zoid a step or two closer.   
  
"I think I like that thing now," Abbie commented, finally managing to say something coherently for once. "But where do you think you`re going with it?" She asked sternly, taking control of the situation the way she almost always did when she felt he was acting out of line.   
  
"Straight to Hell, why?" Mark asked as casually as giving the weather. Kat almost twitched.   
  
"Drop the tough guy act, Mark. What`re you planning?" She asked before Abbie could snap at him.   
  
"Me and Kyle are gonna try and buy you guys time to get out. I don`t know where Beck is, so don`t count on him showing up right now. Just get out _now_," he ordered as bluntly as possible.   
  
"... _Mark_," Abbie began, tongue in cheek.   
  
"Don`t argue with me on this. I love you, and I`ll see you when this is all over, alright?" He asked, just as the Shadow Fox reared up to jump over the Gustav all together.   
  
"... If you don`t come back alive, I`ll beat the crap out of you," she grumbled out in defeat. "Love ya, Markie, see you when this is over."   
  
And with that, the Fox leapt up over the Gustav, landing behind the second trailer and breaking into a sprint down another street, even as Katherine morbidly finished connecting the dots that Kyle was going to be involved as well.   
  
"... How the hell did you manage to get over that, _that_ quickly?" She asked, finally ceding ground to her younger companion as Abbie numbly shifted the Gustav back into forward and pressed the accellerator once again.   
  
"Right now, I just wanna get the hell out of here," she explained as dryly as a desert sunset.   
  
  
_ "Where the hell do you hide something **that fucking huge**?"_ Kyle wondered as the Ivory Blade Liger sped through what remained of one of the countless streets in what had once been the second largest city in the neutral territory between the Helic and Guylos nations. To put it mildly, the senior member of the Suicide Team wasn`t exactly itching for a fight, but stress had made him anxious to get it over with anyway.   
  
The Zoid growled something negative in response to the emotions of his thought, drawing him out of his search and returning him to reality for the most part.   
  
"Something wrong?" He asked it, glancing down at the scanner once again and coming to the disturbing realization that the red speck signifying the lone enemy that had done so much damage was now practically on top of him as far as the 2D layout was concerned.   
  
"Well, that answers _that_," he began in wonder, sparing another glance around the wide open area he had emerged into, just as a horrific cry echoed from far above. His expression fell almost instantly, dropping from the look of a young expert, ready for the fight of his life, to the same look as a deer caught in the headlights of a speeding truck.   
  
"Fuck me," he muttered out, feeling the Liger stop on a dime as the entire world seemed to _rattle_. Once - buildings that had barely remained standing near the center of the hellish maze began to tremble. Twice - those same buildings started to crack and crumble. Three times - each building was now in the midst of falling. Four times - it was all over.   
  
A foot the same width and height as that of an Ultrasaurus, but _vastly_ more armored, crashed through Mazemia`s field of vision like a falling star, shattering the world in front of him as it sank into the burnt, collapsing concrete.   
  
In an instant, Kyle Mazemia had gone from being a lion on the prowl for an intruder to a mouse trying to find a way to bring down a pissed off elephant.   
  
What hit him the most though, was that he had _felt_ the change as it happened.   
  
Mark? Mark would`ve been able to come up with some witty comeback for dealing with the virtual collapse of _any_ sort of advantage - real or imagined - against something of this _monster`s_ sheer magnitude, at least Kyle would`ve probably felt that way had he been able to think clearly. That _idiot_ probably would`ve enjoyed doing so, too.   
  
Kyle?   
  
Quite frankly, even if Kyle had been able to think of something to say, it never would`ve gotten past his lips as more than a hoarse whisper.   
  
For seconds on end, he regarded the leg of the thing, not once thinking to look at anything else, and in those seconds, it felt as if the battle had been lost already - as if it had never even _needed_ to be fought in the first place.   
  
Then those precious moments of hopeless silence crashed into oblivion as his reddish eyes finally lifted themselves up from the console and locked onto what must have been the tail end of the monster. It bent away from him though, slowly angling to Kyle`s front and the demon`s right, countless gun emplacements whirling to point at a target just out of his sight.   
  
And then every single one of them _fired_ at the exact same moment, _bathing_ an area just beyond the hind legs in enough plasma to liquify a Judge Satellite with minimal effort.   
  
_ "What the fuck could something like **that** be wasting so many shots on?!"_ Was his first thought in the instants after the strikes first began, and as an increasingly massive pillar of solid black smoke, 'shadowed' by patches of hot, startk white filled the area just beyond his range of vision, Kyle found out the answer.   
  
"What in God`s name`re _you_ doing here?! Is my nephew with you?" Harabec`s voice rang out over the comm, though it lacked his usual ornery grit by miles. The Revered Raptor practically _flew_ out of the explosions with a long jump, just as the Ivory Blade Liger finally began moving again, taking off after it. It was a rookie`s mistake, really, even if Kyle wasn`t even _close_ to being a rookie.   
  
"**_DON`T EITHER OF YOU HAVE ANY GOD DAMNED COMMON SENSE? GET FROM BEHIND ME OR YOU`LL GET HIT BY THE SHOTS THAT FUCKING THING IS THROWING AT ME!_**" Harabec barked with the tone of an irate parent or a homicidal drill sergeant. Against orders spoken like that, the younger veteran could only reply on sheer force of instinct, suddenly darting _out_ of the path that his older comrade was moving in. Exactly as Harabec had predicted, the attacks to follow would`ve burnt him to a crisp, even if they hadn`t even been aimed at him.   
  
"What _is_ that thing?!" Kyle demanded hotly, whipping the Liger around on its forepaws and swinging his blades forward, into the better firing stance, as he did so.   
  
"The Hellwalker," Harabec answered. "That`s all I know," he added, swiftly bringing the Rev Raptor to a skidding halt and then side stepping a trailing barrage of plasma beams.   
  
The attacks stopped. Neither side dared to break their all too immediate ceasefire, and the guns along the tail of the newly titled Hellwalker suddenly began to rotate back into what Kyle guessed was their neutral positioning, all moving in near perfect unison.   
  
Slowly, the Raptor and the Ivory Liger stepped closer to each other, moving until they were almost shoulder to shoulder - or blade to scythe.   
  
"Any ideas?" Kyle finally managed to ask, unknowing that his reliance upon Harabec was based on experience that the older pilot didn`t even _have_ to begin with. Either way, he never got the chance to really answer.   
  
"_Fucking shit_!" A new voice yelped. "_What in the Hell is **THAT?!**_"   
  
A pause. Harabec chuckled numbly as the Shadow Fox slowly made its way to stand at the side opposite of the Blade Liger, its fanged, predatory mouth literally _sagging_ open in disbelief.   
  
"An Ultrasaurus on crack?" Kyle asked blithely, seeming to slip back into his own skin as his his partner in insanity showed up.   
  
If Mark had a witty comeback on hand, he never got the chance to make use of it. The world was too busy rattling all over the place for him to even do more than spread the Fox`s legs to give it better balance, an action that Kyle and Harabec had both already carried out several seconds beforehand.   
  
The cause of this was the same cause as to why the city of Farentown was now completely lost beyond repair. The Hellwalker.   
  
With the speed of an annoyed monster of unspeakable power, the huge beast wheeled itself around. Step by massive step, giving the three who had dared to stand against it a full view of its body for the first time since the entire incident began - which included the view of a dozen smaller turrets extending from the belly, and the countless undeployed missile launchers on the outer side of each leg.   
  
Finally, it finished turning, the neck raised high and the head completely out of view, leaving a tense silence to follow for several seconds.   
  
And then, like an irate demon, it lunged down - but only partially, getting its enormous face as close to the three seemingly paralyzed Zoids as was possible without leaving itself open to attack. At once, Kyle, Harabec and Mark were treated to the view of staring down the gunbarrels of no less than three massive emplacements along its snout, or the equally unpleasant prospect of how close its gigantic teeth were to them.   
  
With nothing short of a malicious intent that defied description, the Hellwalker _screamed_ at them, sounding like some inhuman cross between a man and an Ultrasaurus or a Whale King. Dust and debris flew back, smoke cleared behind them and fires blew out from the force of it, and all three were treated to the bird`s eye view of _another_ gun hidden within its huge jaws, the barrel extending over the course of a few seconds.   
  
A glow formed in the blackness within, Harabec was the first to fall out of his reverence.   
  
"You should both get the hell outta here," he advised with the calm of the dead.   
  
The glow intensified, particles began to glow and filter into the Hellwalker`s sides from vents that had been either unseen or unnoticed before. Mark responded second, his lack of judgement shining like a full moon against the bleakness of their situation.   
  
"Go fuck yourself if you think I`m lettin` this son of a bitch trash _my_ hometown and get away with it," he snorted.   
  
The glow turned into a narrowed star, expanding slowly as a sphere of excess particles began to form up at the tip of the gun barrel, whirling like the hot, fiery death that was being promised from behind them. Kyle finally spoke, his often hidden leadership potential sounding out with his words.   
  
"Then let`s just not _die_ stopping it," he ordered bluntly.   
  
Before any of the other two could respond, the building energy finally let loose as a titanic beam of pure _death_ ripped from the jaws of the Hellwalker...   
  
_

End Chapter Twenty-Nine  
  


_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Sorry if this and the next chapter both read a little rough. Characterization blocks bitchslapped me all through writing them both, **and** this is the first time I`ve written anything **near** the size of the Hellwalker(which, FYI, is roughly 3.2 _miles_ long :p), so it might not exactly flow like water.  
  
That said, **COMMENCE T3H AHBL!**  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Now why would I have a grudge with the population of Zi, hm? >_> I like torturing and killing them too much to hold a grudge with them! *Cackle. And nods, at Kale.* He`ll show up again at some point, I just felt the need to explain where he`s been lately.  
  
**Illidan:** Henry is now something **else** all together, to be quite blunt about it. And, to paraphrase a song I despise, he`s not that innocent :P Like I said before, Shadow and Kale are just taking the equivelent of a working vacation, so to speak. You know, go off to a nice little tourist trap of a town, sample the local food, do some laundry, commit a few crimes against humanity...  
  
And it`s only Borealis` first day on the job. On top of that, he`s working for _Sarah_. Sarah, who is the mother of two hellraisers, named Kale and Vega. Sarah, who killed her own husband. Sarah, who came a step short of single-handedly bringing down the ZBC and setting herself up to take over the Backdraft. Sarah, who`s basically an older, more mature, ripened Leena. Sarah, who`s practically taken over Champton like she owns the place.  
  
**I** would be trying to behave too...  
  
That`s all for now, folks! Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	30. Burn Around the Moon

  
  
**Foreword:** Armageddon - Burn Around the Moon. As if it wasn`t blaringly obvious enough to begin with...  
  


* * *

  
  


**Reign of Chaos**  
Burn Around the Moon   
  
  
  


The world behind the Gustav turned white for a fraction of a second before fading out with a delayed scream of heated winds. Abbie and Katherine were both jarred upright by the distant explosion, but the boy behind them just sat there, staring straight ahead once again as the night faded back to normal. Stars hung in the sky, partially blotted out by the burning, orange-tinted smoke that billowed up from the city`s remains, but those features were the last thing Kat was bothering with.   
  
A miniature viewscreen popped up within the confines of the monitor, in much the same way a pop-up ad can appear on a computer, showing an explicit view of the remains of a _gigantic_ beam of solar intensity, white at the core but outlined with a rainbow of sickening detail and contrast, eviscerating a second miles long trench through the city. The windsheer alone blew out an uncounted number of fires and ripped innumerable tons of dirt and debris from the ground, melting anything that left behind into scorched, black glass.   
  
A mountain, almost fifty miles to the east, promptly lost its entire upper half before the blast faded out of existence, leaving nothing behind but a seconds-long, absolutely _numb_ feeling silence in the cockpit.   
  
Finally though, Katherine spoke.   
  
"Do you think anything could survive that?" She asked dimly, needing a reassurrance that her rational mind would`ve said was impossible to find. Abbie seemed to have ignored her completely, pressing her foot into the pedal so hard that it looked as if she might have very well stood a chance of pushing right through it.   
  
"Doubtful," the boy said, his voice still ringing with the same kind of ice that had effectively frozen the conversation earlier on. "An attack of that magnitude would probably erase them down to their core molecular structuring. I wouldn`t pin my hopes on them coming back alive."   
  
"Well aren`t _you_ cynical?" Kat growled out, leering dangerously at the kid from where she sat. He didn`t even blink, nor did he bother to turn his attention to her. He just kept staring blankly ahead as if he had tunnel vision.   
  
"Both of you just _shut up_," Abbie finally spat out, cutting into the conversation with the razor sharp tone of a knife. "Mark`s too stubborn to die, and Harabec brought down that Kale guy without even breaking a sweat. I`m not sure about Kyle, but if he`s even half as tough as either of them, he`ll come out alive. _End of story_."   
  
Katherine left it at that. If the boy had anything to reply with, he dropped it as well and returned to his state of absolute silence. Neither had any desire to try and crush the hopes of someone who had probably just lost a surrogate uncle _and_ a lover, in addition to a home town and just about everything else.   
  
  
They had dodged it.   
  
At the relative equivelent of detonating a guided nuclear explosion at _point blank_, they had _dodged it_. Without even taking any direct damage no less.   
  
Of course, Harabec was the only one on his feet. Wind sheer had managed to throw all of them for a loop, but aside from some scratched paint, neither the Ivory Blade Liger, nor the Shadow Fox had taken even the slightest damage, even after crashing down on their sides. The area behind the blast had been reduced to a virtual slice of glassed-over hell, steaming, smoking and blistering as the heat of the attack managed to slowly die down, leaving the two larger Zoids to start standing back up.   
  
The Rev Raptor growled almost ferally, Harabec grit his teeth as the cannon retracted back into the throat of the Hellwalker, the jaws of which promptly slid shut.   
  
"That was _way_ too fuckin` close," he heard Mark bite out, his Zoid having been a second slower than the Liger to finish regaining a foothold on the now scorched ground.   
  
"Any suggestions on how to stop the thing?" Kyle asked dimly, regarding the Hellwalker, now, as if it were just another target. Mark`s seeming _lack_ of self-preservation had apparently begun to rub off on him.   
  
"Aim for the gaps in its armor," Harabec said, not even sure if it would do any good. "Places between armor plates, down gunbarrels, missile launchers - if you can find it, _shoot it_. I don`t think we have any other options."   
  
"Agreed," Kyle threw in blithely, swinging his blades straight up and running through the proper formation to change from the normal burst barrels to the quicker firing gattling type. He knew he probably wasn`t going to get another chance to do so.   
  
The Hellwalker began to lift its head once again, the hearts of the three remaining pilots raced and each Zoid began to deploy its weapons again.   
  
Kyle flipped his blades forward and over the shoulders of the Ivory Liger. Mark gave the laser vulcan gun a quick spin of the barrels, then raised it up out of its forward-set firing stance. Harabec checked the ammo on his cannons and then re-deployed his energy scythes, each one taking on a radiant silver glow.   
  
The guns of the Hellwalker began shifting again, every single one with the trio in its line of fire promptly took aim, randomly picking a target.   
  
"Let`s dance, you fat bastard," Mark said, any and all regard for his safety having been shot in the head and flung off a bridge _long_ before he had ever set his sights on his current enemy.   
  
As if in response, the Hellwalker roared out a war cry, vaguely similar to a Whale King, and then let loose once again.   
  
Gunshots rippled through the area, each of the three Zoids broke off from the others - Kyle to the left, Mark to the right, Harabec straight ahead. Plasma incinerated the ground they had been standing upon, sending a colossal plume of smoke up into the air as the Shadow Fox swiveled its gun almost on auto. Mark didn`t need an alert to know to pull the trigger, it was almost a reflex action, and even then it wasn`t like he was going to miss a target that was at _least_ a mile long.   
  
_ "Shit,"_ he thought, watching as every attack struck into the _insanely_ larger Zoid`s armored hull and fizzled out without ever actually doing any real damage. They left behind a few scorch marks, but even through the hazed distance between the Fox and its target areas on the Hellwalker`s neck, he knew they hadn`t had any real effect.   
  
Before he could bother putting any more effort into it, the Fox shrieked and burst forward, dodging to the side before he had even finished realizing what it was doing. Beams of crystal blue death streaked by in machine gun fashion, each one biting through hundreds of tons of ground as they tried to guess where the Shadow Fox would be next, but none ever hit the mark.   
  
"This is _insane_," he finally managed to get out, taking control back from the Zoid and guiding it into a series of zig-zag turns and jumps, never more than a step ahead of the attacks being thrown at it. "We can`t even dent the fucking thing!"   
  
"What?" Kyle asked mockingly, _knowing_ that such a tone was completely _past_ inappropriate for the current situation. "You finally gettin` cold feet, _newbie_?"   
  
"Shut up, you idiot!" Mark yelled back, skidding the Shadow Fox to a halt and then side flipping out of the way of an incoming missile. "It`s just like we`re fighting a fucking _Ultrasaurus_ that thinks it`s a _Death Saurer_!"   
  
"We are," Harabec blandly pointed out. "Now stop _bitching_ and aim for the gaps!" He ordered, switching the conversation back on track, at the same time that he was making a back flip away from another plasma beam, landing on both feet with uncanny balance. Almost instantly, the Rev Raptor`s guns jolted from recoil, a pair of shots knifing through the air and hitting in one of the dozen or so gaps along the heavier armor in the Hellwalker`s throat.   
  
There was almost _no_ effect. The gigantic Zoid rumbled with what clearly sounded like a similar annoyance to something being bitten by a mosquito.   
  
Harabec grimaced deeply, holding still for all of a tenth of a second before the Rev Raptor moved on its own accord, hauling out of the way of an incoming series of missiles while Mark cleared his throat over the broadband.   
  
"Did I not _tell you_ that this is insane?" He asked dimly.   
  
"Can it."   
  
Both snorted, Kyle shook his head and took aim. The Liger growled and rocked back slightly as its dual impact cannons let off a salvo, both shots hitting somewhere near a gap in the Hellwalker`s right forefoot`s armor. Still no effect.   
  
"I think I`m starting to agree with Mark on this," he commented, pausing for less than a second and _knowingly_ allowing countless guns and missile launchers to lock onto his Zoid. "None of our shots so far are having any real effect," he said with the cool tone of someone whose mind was trying to turn off any active emotions that might interfere with staying alive.   
  
The Hellwalker fired again, Kyle dodged by inches that felt like miles for him, avoiding a fiery end as the Liger leapt forward and took off into a sprint, back booster springing up and burning to life with a burst of white fire. Almost automatically, the blades flipped straight up and then lowered back down the sides of the Ivory Liger, each one taking on a hot, golden glow as the Zoid made its charge with a challenging roar.   
  
Of course, the Liger had never actually counted on its challenge being _heard_ by the vastly larger, vastly more powerful, vastly more _homicidal_ Zoid that it was up against, and as a result, it hadn`t counted on the Hellwalker actually _accepting it_.   
  
With every stride it made, the Blade Liger closed with its target, and Kyle growled almost as ferally as his own Zoid as the distance between he and the right forefoot of the Hellwalker shrunk with every passing second. His ears went selectively deaf, his eyes developed tunnel vision and the Liger gained another burst of speed to accompany it, racing frantically against the larger Zoid`s reflexes, even as it _felt_ one of the Hellwalker`s optics virtually narrowing on its backside.   
  
Mark and Harabec _both_ let out shouts over the broadband, Kyle either didn`t hear them at all or chose to ignore them completely, even as the gigantic foot of the Ultrasaurus from Hell began to break out of the yards-deep imprint it had left, lifting up through the air with a tidal wave of dust and dirt.   
  
Kyle felt the Liger instinctively kick on its shield by its own accord, just as the dust overtook the basic optics. Automatically, Kyle`s eyes fell to his scanner, but by then, it was already too late.   
  
"**_KYLE!!!_**"   
  
There was a sound close to glass shattering from a golf club, and then the Ivory Blade Liger came flying back out of the dust cloud, the remains of its shield following behind almost like a vapor trail made of shards of energy. By the time that both of the other pilots had finished taking in what had just happened, the Liger had performed a series of corkscrewing flips in every possible direction, only to slam head first, upside down, right through what remained of one of the taller buildings in the city, crashing through whatever else was behind it until hitting the ground and rebounding back up into a tumbling roll.   
  
By the time it stopped, the Ivory Liger was lying on its side, having been thrown right out of the city itself.   
  
It was covered in debris, several gashes had formed in its armor and the cockpit glass was cracked in numerous places - one of the teeth was missing as well, but somehow, as if by a miracle, none of the limbs or the blades had been ripped off. Damaged, yes, but severed outright? No.   
  
Silence reigned for several seconds, and then finally, a low groan issued over the broadband.   
  
"You... Fucking... _**DUMBASS!!!**_" Mark finally screamed in reply, still staring in the direction the Liger had just gone flying off in a few moments earlier. "_**WHAT IN THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, YOU IDIOT?!**_"   
  
"Chew `im out later, Mark, we got enough trouble as is," Harabec retorted sharply, and his nephew promptly shifted to glare accusingly at the Hellwalker, its head held as high as a skyscraper, those doom-filled, orange eyes burning like miniature suns.   
  
"Right... Don`t suppose you can pull a Gravity Cannon out of your ass, can you?" The younger of the two pilots asked blankly.   
  
"... If I could, I`d`a used it by now," the older replied with the same tone.   
  
  
There was the passing sensation of feeling as though a hair had just been plucked from one of his eyebrows with a tweezer, and then his vision came back into focus once again, though the background hum in his thoughts was as constant as it had been for two or three days now.   
  
"Welcome back to the land of the living," came a slightly nasal sounding voice from his left and front, a bit intentionally low as if the speaker constantly mumbled to himself.   
  
"I couldn`t stomach watching it anymore," Vega replied dryly, reaching up and wiping one of his eyes with a fist.   
  
"Watching what?" Lars asked, though he was paying more attention to a game on his datapad than anything else.   
  
"We`ve lost Farentown. Romeo`s not gonna be around much longer either."   
  
Lars stopped as if he`d just run into a brick wall. Kyle and Katherine were _both_ in Farentown.   
  
"Are they alright?" He asked, knowing that Vega would understand who he was talking about almost instantly.   
  
"... Katherine isn`t in any immediate danger, I don`t think. Kyle... I`m not so sure about Kyle," the younger of the two answered, carefully choosing his words in the pause that he had crafted for himself as he did so.   
  
If Lars had been impacted by the information, he didn`t show it. Not in any recognizable way, anyway. The reclusive computer genius simply paused and saved his game, turned it off and switched over to some other program, reaching up to scratch behind one ear as Vega stood up.   
  
"I`m going to go see if she`s awake yet," he explained, turning away from the chair he had been sitting in and walking to the doorway. Two swishing sounds later, Lars sat alone at the controls of the Hammerhead, tongue in cheek as he began to work his magic on something or other within the virtual world confined to his datapad.   
  
  
By the time that Kyle`s head stopped spinning in every direction, the Blade Liger had started to stand up. Both blades were still extended to either side, the glass of the cockpit had cracked in three or four places and more cracks and lines had appeared all over the dust covered Zoid, its tail hanging almost limply to the ground.   
  
"Thassa last time I try to play soccer with a wrecking ball," he groaned dizzily, resisting the urge to shake the cobwebs out of his head as he reached up and checked himself over.   
  
He was bleeding down the side of his forehead, there were bruises all over his lower legs that he didn`t even _have_ to see to recognize and his elbows were both numb. Bad signs, but nothing he couldn`t ignore if he had to.   
  
"Guys?" He asked, forgetting that he had left the comm on just before he had been punted through god knows how many tons of debris in a matter of seconds.   
  
"Oh _good_, you`re awake," Mark`s sardonic, angry voice chimed in almost instantly, underscored by the sound of the Shadow Fox`s main gun firing.   
  
"What`s your status, Kyle?" Harabec`s calmer voice popped into his ears a few seconds after, rousing the twenty-something pilot a bit more. The others were alive, that was a good sign, right?   
  
"Uh... Not good?" He asked, clearly having lost all bearings at the moment. It would`ve taken him a matter of seconds to check his console if he were in the right state of mind and body, but right now, the world was still shaking and it felt like someone had just used his _head_ to ring a church bell. From the _inside_.   
  
"Your console, dumbass," Mark pointed out. "Look at the screen. It should automatically be bringing up a diagnostic after a hit like _that_."   
  
"... Most of it`s either dark yellow or red."   
  
"Shit," Harabec muttered as the firing stopped and the ground shook and rumbled once again, trembling four times in near-rapid succession as a _massive_ silhouette shifted about in the distance, knocking over the remains of buildings and spilling out copious amounts of death from almost every part of its body, mostly in the form of plasma beams and the occasional missile.   
  
"_Ohhhh yeah_," Kyle blinked, red eyes going a bit wider than usual as he regarded the fire-tinted figure of the Hellwalker, suddenly remembering how his attack had gone wrong and how it had ended up sending him across the city like a fly caught in the path of a haymaker.   
  
"Yeah," Mark replied dryly between explosions, the incessant growling and shrieking of the Shadow Fox proving barely audible in comparison. "What in the _fuck_ were you _thinking_? Aren`t _you_ supposed to be the _smart one_ here?"   
  
"... Shyaddap, newb..."   
  
  
"I really hope they`re alright," Katherine finally blurted out, going out of her usual character and clasping her hands together with a nervous twiddling of her thumbs.   
  
"I`d give anything to be back there with Kyle... If I had my old Pteras-" "You`d just be shot down," the boy interrupted bluntly. "I doubt any aerial Zoid would do any good against the kind of thing they`re dealing with. I doubt they`re even still alive."   
  
"Be _quiet_," Abbie snapped at the others, having the tone of an upset parent laced into her voice. "_Both_ of you. I`m _not_ repeating myself."   
  
Kat let out a tired sigh, underscored by a series of gunshots in the background. It was obvious that there was probably still at least some fighting sitll going on in what remained of Farentown, a city that had been reduced to ashes and dust in a matter of _minutes_. There just wasn`t enough rubble left to qualify even for target practice, if what they had last seen was any indication.   
  
"Can`t we at least call them? To check up on them?" Kat asked, showing _another_ unusual trait in that she was actually sounding rather _timid_ for once.   
  
The sideways glare she got as an answer was enough that she let the subject drop there. The boy didn`t cut in, and at this point, he really didn`t need to.   
  
Abbie`s eyes alone had said enough. They were as violet tinted as ever, but a bit watery around the edges, packing something beneath the surface that Katherine had simply _known_ was past the point of arguement. As much as she herself wanted to go back and fight alongside Kyle, that single look from Abbie had basically said that the petite, green haired medical student was as determined to keep running as she was hurting inside at the choice she`d had to make.   
  
Unlike Kat, Abbie had effectively taken on the lives of around a hundred people into her hands when she`d gotten into the driver`s seat. And then she`d had to choose saving _those_ lives over trying to look for other survivors, as well as trying to force her own boyfriend to come along as well. On top of _that_, her hometown for the past two or three years had just gone straight to _Hell_ in under fifteen minutes. It was taking everything she had just to keep _going_ at this point.   
  
That said, Katherine stopped twiddling her thumbs and shifted in her seat slightly, looking out through the side cockpit glass and catching the briefest glimpse of a shadow out in the desert, illuminated for less than a split second by a streak of moonlight before vanishing again, only the faintest trace of anything identifiable present in its short appearance.   
  
_ "... What was that?"_ She wondered, absently seeking to remove her mind from thoughts of the carnage back in the city.   
  
  
Stop, hop, turn and shoot. That was the only tactic that Harabec could think of in the seconds leading up to now, bringing his guns to lock onto a single point, just behind the bottom of the Hellwalker`s lower jaw. Without any hesitation, without even being sure that the shot would hit, he pulled the trigger and dodged to the side reflexively as he did so.   
  
Two thirty pound, explosive projectiles lanced through the air at several times the speed of sound, crashing violently into the base of the gigantic, mutant Ultrasaurus` jaw and blowing apart in an instant, just as the Shadow Fox came skidding to a halt nearby, the turret already swinging around to follow the lead of Harabec`s earlier attack. This time, there was a straight line of gray smoke and orange fire, leading from the base of the jaw to the chin as the Hellwalker began to lower its head in contempt.   
  
Orange optics flared brightly, those enormous jaws flew open and the head finished diving down towards the ground, missing the Rev Raptor by precious _inches_, with the undescribably smaller Zoid jumping out of the way at what could best be described as the last possible second, if _that_.   
  
It was just the kind of opportunity that Mark had been waiting for. With what he had in the way of experience, and with the Shadow Fox itself guiding his aim, the targeting reticule whipped over the side of the Hellwalker`s gigantic head and locked down across one of its optics. His index finger did the rest, pressing the trigger hard enough that he felt as though it would jam. The barrels whirled up and then let loose with a barrage by the time he had even finished realizing what he was doing, and for the first time -   
  
"**_SUCK ON THAT, PIG FUCKER!_**"   
  
- the Hellwalker groaned in pain. Explosions tore across the left eye, trailing up and down in a continual pattern for all of two seconds before the head snapped back up from the ground, plasma turrets swinging to get a lock on the hapless offender.   
  
By the time that the Demon let loose, the Shadow Fox had hauled it out of dodge, springing away from the area it had formerly been standing in, an area which promptly turned into into a colossal fireball that was easily six or seven times the size of a Gojulas, probably even _larger_ still.   
  
"Go for the eyes," Harabec mumbled. "Why the hell didn`t _I_ think of that?" He asked himself drearily, watching his nephew weave through the dozens of plasma beams that were following his movements, knowing that for the moment, he had been forgotten completely.   
  
"`Cause you`re _senile_," Mark jabbed, somewhere in between dodging instant death and praying to God that he could keep it up.   
  
If Harabec had a witty retort, and he most certainly _did_, Mark`s ears never registered more than the beginning of the first syllable as the Hellwalker threw it`s head back again, howling in pain as it had before, a pair of neatly arranged explosions rocking across the left eye for a second time, though both of the remaining pilots knew that _they_ hadn`t been the ones to throw the attacks.   
  
"You bastards think I`m gonna let you have all the glory?" Kyle asked, just as both of his team mates shifted to glance in the direction that the busted up Blade Liger had been soccer kicked in earlier on.   
  
They couldn`t have seen it, but even with all of the damage inflicted to the Ivory Liger, it was still able to stand and fight, albeit only from a long distance. Both blades had been flipped forward, over the shoulders, and the barrels had been switched over to the sniping setup, while the forelegs were spred and bent about as much as possible, considering the damage that the Zoid had gone through.   
  
And in the cockpit, one banged up, twenty-something veteran by the name of Kyle Mazemia was wearing a grin that would`ve done his self-proclaimed lunatic of a team mate proud.   
  
"Nice shot," Harabec commented as the last traces of the Hellwalker`s screaming died down to little more than an angered growl, even as the neck began to straighten back out, both eyes glowing even brighter than before.   
  
"Think ya pissed `im off even more than I did," Mark added as casually as if he were giving the weather.   
  
"Oink," Kyle replied. "Oink, oink, oink."   
  
Silence. And then...   
  
"You`ve _both_ got issues, yanno that?" Harabec asked sardonically, leering over at the Shadow Fox as it made a gesture remarkably similar to shrugging.   
  
The conversation instantly stopped with all of the finesse of a car flying into the ground from the top of a six story building, mainly because two thirds of its participants were now running for their lives as missiles and plasma beams rained down into the area, scorching the already fried, glassed earth even more than before, though both the Shadow Fox and the Rev Raptor were mostly unscathed by some minor miracle.   
  
The Blade Liger growled, Kyle squinted one eye shut as blood trickled down from the cut on the side of his forehead. All things considered, he should`ve been running for his life, with or without the Blade Liger, but he stayed put, even as the ground shuddered from the Hellwalker`s attempts at swatting flies with a sledge hammer.   
  
That shudder promptly halted like it hadn`t even happened, just as the entire, warped Ultrasaurus seemed to tilt back onto its hind legs for several seconds, the tail and neck both arcing high as another deafening screech echoed through the ears of anything within six or seven miles of the city`s remains. For several more moments after this, Kyle was left to do nothing but watch as the Shadow Fox and the Rev Raptor stopped and turned away, no longer hindered by plasma beams, missiles or anything else since their monstrous foe had stopped its attacks for the duration.   
  
And then the tremendous monstrosity started falling back to the ground, feet first.   
  
_ "Ahhhh Hell..."   
  
_ The Rev Raptor and the Shadow Fox both vanished in a tidal wive of shattered, charred glass, ash, dust and dirt as the two forefeet of the Hellwalker crashed into the scorched earth beneath it with enough force to instantly give birth to a small scale earthquake that was powerful enough to almost jar the Ivory Blade Liger`s balance, even two or three _miles_ from the twin epicenters, though the dust wave stopped just a few hundred yards short of doing the same.   
  
Fires across one half of the city stopped for a short time before churning back to life as the Hellwalker started prying its feet from the pits that had formed around them, first the right, then the left.   
  
Only Kyle and the Ivory Liger were still standing by the time it finished. The Rev Raptor and the Shadow Fox had _both_ vanished during the seconds after the attack, and there was a fairly high chance that both were buried under countless _tons_ of debris as a result.   
  
"_Crap_," the lone pilot bit out venomously. "_Crap_, _crap_, _crap_, _crap_..."   
  
The Hellwalker took several steps back from the epicenter of the former earthquake, its head still smoking from where the shots had hit its eyes, _both_ of which were promptly dimmed while it seemed to glower in the direction of the last pest that had dared to defy its reign of terror.   
  
"Don`t suppose we could talk this out over a beer, huh?" Kyle asked cynically, finding his question greeted with a rumbling growl that was audible even from the distance between he and the Demon.   
  
A symphony of clicks and whirls of machinery followed, both of the Blade Liger`s sniper rifles and its main gun locking onto the left eye of the Hellwalker, _all_ of the Hellwalker`s available weaponry locking onto the Blade Liger`s general location with all of the spite and malice that something of that size could manage.   
  
"Didn`t think so."   
  
Light began to gather in every barrel, the Hellwalker`s mouth slid open and its main gun extended into view, already starting to glow, along with the countless vents along its sides, sucking in and charging particles like there was no tomorrow, because in truth, there probably _wasn`t_. In response, the Blade Liger growled and prepared to go out fighting, its formerly limp tail snapping up and going rigid as both rifles began to light up from a near overcharge, the double impact cannon on its chest showing no signs of change.   
  
If the Zoid could make human expressions, it would`ve been _smiling_.   
  
And that was when the virtual _mountain_ of dust and debris blew open in two places at once, a stream of pulse lasers and four pairs of solid cannon rounds alike streaming through the air to crash into the roof of the Hellbringer`s mouth. At best, the damage was negligable, but the psychological effect was what mattered.   
  
The colossal Demon stopped short of firing off another salvo of instant death, seeming to stagger back slightly as its main gun retracted back into its throat, both eyes now _burning_ with rage so thick that a knife wouldn`t`ve been able to cut it in decades as both the Shadow Fox and Rev Raptor, each briefly stained a dull brown from being _covered_ in dirt, emerged from where they`d been hidden, one growling as annoyedly as the pilots themselves _felt_.   
  
"Show-offs," Kyle muttered, powering his rifles back down and taking the time to wipe the blood from the eye that was still squinting shut.   
  
"Ass savers is more like it," Mark pointed out with a slightly smug tone before going serious once again. "But I don`t think we can win this one... We should cut our losses and haul ass outta here before all three of us get turned into _shit stains_ on that thing`s _foot_."   
  
"... I thought you had no self preservation?" Kyle asked dimly.   
  
"... You haven`t ever had to deal with Abbie when she`s really, _really_ pissed off, now have you?" Mark answered about as bluntly as possible. Harabec cut them off from going into another insult jammed tirade, speaking up with an unnervingly calm tone of voice.   
  
"Mark`s right. We can`t stay and fight this thing, not here, at least," he said, only to continue. "Mark, you know which way Abbie went, right?" He asked.   
  
"Yeah."   
  
"Lead Kyle that way, I`ll try and get Big Ugly here to ignore you, then join up later."   
  
There was a pause.   
  
"Beck. Don`t you _even fucking think it_," Mark growled out angrily, having read his uncle`s intentions like an open book. "Mom and Dad`d have a fuckin` _heart attack_, man."   
  
"Like they don`t everytime they see _your_ god damn ass out there in a Zoid battle?" Harabec retorted sharply. "Besides, I`m the best pilot here, I can take care o` myself. You just need to take care of everything else for me."   
  
"He`s got a point, Mark," Kyle`s voice sounded into the other pilot`s ears, a good bit more sedate than usual. For the time being, the Hellwalker seemed more or less content to try and shake off the effects of the ambush, rather than to attack them again. They were wasting time, even _Mark_ knew that much, but still...   
  
Moments of rare indecisiveness passed before the youngest of the trio finally snorted and spoke up again, however annoyed he might or might not have sounded.   
  
"Then promise me you`ll survive and meet up with us again by tomorrow," he ordered, narrowing both eyes in the direction of the Rev Raptor. The black and gold Zoid seemed to pause in tune with its pilot, neither moving, but at least one thinking.   
  
"Promise me or I`ll blow the legs off that Zoid and drag your ass out with us," Mark affirmed, swiveling the Shadow Fox`s main gun to point to the hips of the Rev Raptor.   
  
"Deal," Harabec finally answered, a bit _too_ simply for anyone else`s tastes.   
  
It was in that moment that the Shadow Fox`s gun pointed forward and lowered back down again, just as the black Zoid turned around and broke into a series of hopping strides before running off in the direction of the Ivory Blade Liger.   
  
With that out of the way, Harabec calmly flipped off his comm link and took in a deep, eerily relaxed breath, one gloved hand casually flipping open a small compartment on the front of one of the arm rests, causing a small tray to flip out with a brown-capped silver tube and an old lighter in place next to it. The Rev Raptor growled accordingly, both blades flipping back for the duration as the Hellwalker finished recovering with an angry shake of the head, though it had yet to make a sound.   
  
"Dumb kid always _did_ make me give `im promises I couldn`t keep," he commented to the Zoid, which seemed to shrug accordingly, one foot coming forward of its own accord. Each arm curled up for balance, but it had yet to start running.   
  
All of the massive deathbringer`s attention shifted over the course of another two or three seconds, which was the same time it took for Beck to take his gloves off and cast them into the floor. Dozens of guns and missile launchers capable of blowing holes through Type Nine and Ten Whale Kings whirled about to lock onto the position of the Rev Raptor, but the old pro didn`t pay them any mind.   
  
Instead, he took the silver covering off of the cigar, which had already been partially smoked to begin with, and then put the business end into his mouth before grabbing the lighter. Two clicks and a small flicker of flame later, a slight trail of smoke lifted from the burning tip of the old cancer stick, the cover and the lighter both finding their way back into the compartment, which was promptly slammed shut with no amount of care on Beck`s part.   
  
The gloves were off. There were no bystanders to worry about, no family members and friends to have to look out for and no valuable structures to have to deal with. The world itself had fallen apart and the only things that seemed to matter anymore, in the self-contained battlefield that had once been Farentown, were the monstrous Hellwalker and the small, but proud Rev Raptor that had the guts to defy it.   
  
Where before, the colossus had bothered to charge up for the sheer thrill of it, now there was no such pause. The ceasefire ended with a thousand explosions and a single, whistfully spoken sentence that seemed to have no real meaning to anyone but the man who said it.   
  
"So much for that little get-together, huh, Liese?"   
  
And with that, the Revered Raptor launched forward one last time, escaping one death as it did so, but chasing another all the same.   
  
  
***BANG!!!***   
  
Both the Shield Liger and the Shadow Fox slowed from their previous jog away from the remains of the city, the slightly smaller Zoid turning its head to glance in the direction of what looked like a low level nuclear explosion, forming into a hellishly bright, purple and white tinted sphere, which in turn seemed to force itself to become nothing short of a doomsday whirlwind for almost a minute and a half before slowly dissipating into nothing but a pitch black cloud of smoke, with only scant glows of orange and red occasionally breaking into view.   
  
For a time, there was silence. And then the Shadow Fox turned its head forward again.   
  
"... You`ll be okay," Kyle finally commented with about as much comfort as he could manage.   
  
"... Right. Let`s just find the Gustav," Mark replied with one of the most nonchalant, empty sounding attempts at sarcasm that he had ever bothered making.   
  
Both Zoids promptly sped back up into a jog, slowed only by a mixture of the injuries to the Blade Liger and the grief that was slowly but surely washing over the numbed pilot of the Shadow Fox.   
  


_ End Chapter Thirty_  
  


* * *

  
  


**Author`s Note:** I **REALLY** hope that didn`t read like wet cardboard... This chapter was an even bigger bitch to write than the one before it.  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** At this point EA, I`d rather appreciate it if you stop sniping at me and start being a **bit** more neutrally objective. I can only take so many nitpicks and annoyances before I chew someone out, and for the past three reviews you`ve sent, all you`ve done is nitpick at things **YOU** find wrong. I can understand disliking them, but if you`re going to do nothing but sit there and snipe me in reviews, or IM me with little jingles about how my characters are stupid, take it elsewhere. Nothing personal, and I apologize ahead of time if you find what I just said offensive.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Don`t worry, he`ll be going back to work soon >_> And I`m glad you liked Madison and Rommel`s little... Chat. It was probably my favorite part of that chapter :P  
  
**Illidan:** Kyle/Mark/Harabec have/had something simply known as one of two things: Idiot Shielding or Character Shielding. Take your pick :P And glad you no longer dislike Madison. Believe it or not, I actually went a bit out of my way to write that so people **would** like her, and now, I`m glad that I did.  
  
**Nox ab desparo:** Glad ya like it :D  
  
Welp, that`s all for now. Expect a few more delays before the next chapters start posting, ROC is winding down and I`m going to have to start lengthening the chapters out if I hope to have a reasonably clean(and/or bloodier than your momma`s used tampons) slate to start on x_x Hopefully, the quality will improve with the length. Expect certain things to **start** fleshing themselves out, very soon.  
  
Hope you enjoyed the chapter, leave a review, and Sh33p out! 


	31. Shattered Reverence

  
  
**Foreword:** Get out the notepad folks, this ST list`s a **bit** longer than usual...  
  
Scene One: Rurouni Kenshin - Last Wolf Suite(from 3:26 to 6:01, to be specific)  
Scene Two: Inuyasha - Rei no Chikara/Strength of Soul  
Scene Three: Metallica - One  
Scene Four: This is where it gets complicated...  
**Flashbacks:** The Two Towers - Requiem for a Dream  
Carl Orf - O Fortuna  
**Actual Scene:** Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Angel  
Scene Five: Inuyasha - Shrine Maiden Kikyo  
Scene Six: Sarah McLachlan - I Will Remember You  
Scene Seven: Korn - Alone I Break  
Scene Eight: Metallica - Enter Sandman(S&M Version)  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Shattered Reverence   
  


  
  
"So much for that little get-together, huh, Liese?"   
  
As the words hit the sanitized smelling air in the cockpit, the gears in the legs of the outdated, black-and-gold Rev Raptor blazed to life once again, churning with something that just hadn`t been there before. With their activation, years of experienced reflexes kicked in and an adaptive mind geared every last ounce of its power from resignation to its owners fate to carrying that destiny out as effectively as possible.   
  
Smoke blew from his nostrils, his ungloved hands locked like vices onto the controls and the Rev Raptor launched forward with a screeching battle cry, the ground exploding into a proverbial _hellfire_ in its wake. Plasma and missiles rained down by the bucket load, but as the entire world seemed to fade to little more than a streaking tunnel in his eyes, the old veteran seemed to consciously tune out everything, switching into some mental gear that only often found only in soldiers at war.   
  
Everything was a blur, instinct followed thoughts that were moving at speeds that, quite frankly, should`ve been impossible.   
  
The action paused for the briefest of moments, he came to the realization that the Rev Raptor was now directly beneath the mass of the Hellwalker`s main body, and as a result, he drew a breath and a drag from his cigar at once. The movements he`d made had been swift beyond belief, the colossal Zoid seemed dumbfounded by them, reacting as if it was being controlled by nothing short of a spoiled rookie punk with a new toy and a grudge against everyone in existence.   
  
_ "Go for the eyes,"_ he thought, and his body obeyed as if he were having an out-of-body experience. The Hellwalker stumbled to compensate, the guns across its stomach moving seconds to try and lock onto a target that had already gone off on its own.   
  
The Rev Raptor that had always felt so outdated in comparison to Zoids like the Liger Zero or even the mighty Berserk Fury was now moving with a speed that defied logic, outpacing even a Lightning Saix as it closed in with whatever goal the pilot`s brain had marked off as step one in this last strike. The ground was exploding all over the place within a second of its initial launch, even beneath its feet, and yet the Zoid itself remained virtually unscathed.   
  
_ This_ was what had given him the title of the Revered Raptor. _This_ was why he had been a champion for four years straight in the toughest class of the Zoid battling leagues, _this was it_.   
  
The Hellwalker`s neck craned around, only one eye visible, the same eye trying in vain to track the impossibly smaller Zoid`s movements. Instincts alone seemed to be guiding the massive creature, but those instincts had shifted from those of a predator on the hunt to prey under assault from the most dangerous of foes, and it wasn`t long before every gun on the Hellwalker`s body was firing almost randomly at anything that did or didn`t move, sending explosions sky-high all over the place.   
  
_ "Predict."   
  
_ The Rev Raptor howled its war cry as the Hellwalker`s tail finally pulled into the exact position that Harabec had been waiting for. By the time even _he_ had finished registering the change, the Revered Raptor had positioned itself in a tensed, battle ready crouch upon the gigantic monster`s tail, just ahead of the three cannons in place there, both scythes flipped back out of use to lower drag. The clawed hands of each arm had braced into the thick, nearly impervious seeming armor of the Demon, while each eye glowed with a feral, almost inconcievable level of dedication.   
  
There was no surrender to despair and hopelessness in this one, defiant rebel.   
  
There would be _no_ retreat either.   
  
"Got you right where I want you, you big fat son of a bitch," the old veteran finally whispered out with conviction and a toothy grin that looked even more animalistic than the snout of the Zoid he was piloting, even as every gun on or within firing range of the tail locked onto his position with little or no regard of the Hellwalker`s own safety.   
  
With a scream on his part and a screech from the Zoid he had partnered himself with, the Rev Raptor launched from the place it had been standing, clearing out bare nanoseconds before a hail of plasma scorched the tip of the tail black, somehow causing little or no damage despite the sheer _firepower_ involved.   
  
The universe became a distant blur to his eyes and tunnel vision set in once again, his world was the cockpit of his Zoid, nothing mattered but the objective and making sure it was carried out.   
  
At speeds that would make Jack Sisco and the Tasker Sisters balk, the Rev Raptor whipped its way up the length of the Hellwalker`s tail, seemingly impervious to every gun the thing could shoot at it, and equally impervious to the countless anti-Zoid missiles now chasing after it only to be shot down by the same guns that couldn`t even touch it to begin with.   
  
Both of the charged particle cannon turrets locked onto the charging Raptor as best they could, each firing with sustained, low level beams, and each missing no matter how hard they tried to hit the mark. It was like trying to use an artillery cannon to bring down a psychotic fly.   
  
Color faded out as the Rev Raptor made it to the main body section of the Hellwalker, jumping up once onto the first turret, then again to stand upon the second, each time moving with an impossible speed that caused chips of impossibly heavy armor to go flying into the air from where its bladed feet touched down. Again though, it made a third jump, and by then, Harabec`s vision had regained only one color in contrast to the black and white that filled it before, a specific shade of orange that could be found on in the furnaces of Hell that were his target`s eyes.   
  
One last time, the Rev Raptor landed, touching down swiftly upon the very base of the colossal Zoid`s neck, but this time, it paused, standing lethally calm between the two foremost mortar cannons.   
  
If Henry Rommel`s mind could still comprehend the emotion of fear for his _life_, it was probably surging through him as every sound on the planet became nothing but a forgotten underline to the noise that came with each deadly scythe upon the Rev Raptor`s back coming to life with a silvery blue glow before flipping forward.   
  
In that instant, the Hellwalker stopped being the most dangerous thing on the continent and instantly turned into the largest deer caught in headlights that had ever existed.   
  
"End o` the line, you rotten bastard," Harabec growled, having already come to the realization that this would be his final attack. His heart pounded into his throat with that thought, but it didn`t serve to slow him down. Not even the added resistance of the energy scythes could.   
  
As one, they moved, the Hellwalker trying in vain to turn away and get its left eye out of the line of fire, even tilting its neck back as far as possible to create a slope in hopes that it would slow the Rev Raptor down. It was futile though, because as the Hellwalker tried to dodge what even the remains of Henry`s fragmented mind knew was going to be a potentially lethal hit, the Rev Raptor had seemingly _vanished_ from sight, blurring into non-existence with the crack of a gunshot.   
  
Anti-Zoid fire slowed to a halt, every movement caused his vision to go black and the closer he got to the head of the Demon, the closer he knew he was getting to his own end.   
  
One last battle cry filled the stale, now smoke-filled air of the cockpit, his knuckles turned white and the joints of his fingers screamed in protest. Hasty, raging strides head lead the Raptor right to its target with a speed that could almost be called godlike, a speed that seemed impossible to rival even in comparison to that of a teleporting Organoid. One last step carried it diagonally onto the left side of the neck, and then it was over.   
  
_ Snap_.   
  
The black Rev Raptor _flew_ with the grace of one of its aerial cousins, one leg curling dramatically as the other straightened behind it, in line with its rigid tail. Both arms trailed to either side, but one blade had snapped cleanly off at the base, the remains of its stabilizer tearing off into the air from wind resistance. Harabec`s scream became nothing short of a delirious laugh of absolute _triumph_.   
  
His Zoid continued ascending for what felt like hours before gravity kicked back into play, slowing it first to a halt, then pulling it back down from what had probably been over a mile off the ground. Reflexively, he eased his grip on the controls, feeling his worn fingers start to soothe themselves almost instantly.   
  
_ "This is gonna hurt, ain`t it?"_ He wondered to his Zoid, feeling its emotions perform the equivelent of a ginger, careless shrug in response. It brought another chuckle to him, even after he had finished quieting down from the laughing that had come with his attack`s success. His head reclined almost casually against the rest of the sight, his lips tightened around the burning cigar and his hands finally released the controls, gripping his harness instead.   
  
With an implosion of metal and a fierce explosion of dirt and dust, the Rev Raptor crashed to the ground, its tail breaking and its legs immediately threatening, but not fully managing to follow suit. Both cannons were jarred from its back, giving a reflex firing as they broke away. Each arm snapped loose at the elbow, and the neck only barely held on by the will of the Zoid itself.   
  
Harabec, despite this crashdown, came through it unscathed, only barely managing to pay attention to the agonized shrieking that was playing itself out in the background, underscored by several explosions and tremors as guns fired and feet stomped.   
  
Almost laughing, he coaxed the Rev Raptor into getting up once again, if only to poke fun in the face of his humiliated enemy. The Zoid, broken down as it now was, responded with what sounded like a rumbling, gleeful little growl, having landed on its stomach. The climb to its feet wasn`t easy by any means, but it made it anyway, if only out of sheer spite, and when it did, he undid the harness.   
  
The cockpit flipped open as the dust cleared, and with its good eye now glowing an insane shade of red, the Hellwalker _glared _absolute _death _in the face of the man and the lowly Zoid that had _dared _to defy its reign of terror. Instead of the fear that should`ve been there though, it was greeted only with the smug, shitheaded grin plastered across the face of one Harabec Davids, seconded by the half-toothless Rev Raptor he had been piloting, and now awaited his execution with.   
  
For a moment, there was silence as the two regarded each other, Harabec`s eerily calm and pleasant, almost golden-brown eyes clashing with the one good red optic unit of Henry Rommel. In that moment, he finally got the chance to survey the damage he had been so proud of inflicting.   
  
The Rev Raptor`s right scythe had broken off right in the center of the Hellwalker`s left eye, and had promptly become lodged there as a result. Sparks flew from the cut that lead to where the scythe was positioned, the eye itself had darkened to almost black.   
  
Smugly as ever, Harabec took a long puff off of his cigar, and then spoke, ending the momentary truce as if it had never even existed.   
  
"Yanno," he began, each and every gun and missile launcher on the Hellwalker`s body promptly locking onto him as best it could, the entire tail curving out to the side and the mouth opening up as its main gun started charging up.   
  
"You really are one sorry son of a bitch," he finished, promptly exhaling smoke out of the side of his mouth and raising one hand up, middle finger happily raised in the face of his own demise.   
  
"See ya in Hell!" He gleefully exclaimed, still waving the one-finger salute as the Hellwalker let loose once more.   
  
  
... Hn.   
  
"Hm?" Kale voiced idly, leaning back against a brick wall with soda in hand. He was actually _dressed_ now, having made the switch from nothing and back into his piloting outfit, though he`d yet to put his gloves on. His hair was as unkempt as usual, though he`d actually bothered to brush it for once, and it was obvious that he had recently showered, as evidenced by the fact that while his hair might have been brushed back out of his face and into an even more Ravenesque style than usual, it was still slightly wet.   
  
I`m not sure if you should know, really, Shadow answered, staring blankly into the distance, in whatever direction that Farentown happened to be in. The jet black Organoid stood menacingly within the darkness for which it was named, seeming to hover just out of range of the street lamp`s immediate light, or the light cast off from the apartment building that Kale was leaning against. If anything though, the Organoid`s comment only made Kale more curious, though he didn`t bother _saying _it, preferring instead to just quirk a brow in Shadow`s general direction.   
  
It doesn`t look like you`ll be getting the chance to avenge that earlier... Incident, involving that Harabec Davids guy, the black creature explained, crystal blue optics seeming to narrow ever so slightly. _That_ roused Kale even more.   
  
"And why`s that?" He asked, only slightly annoyed at the virtual revelation that had just been dropped in his lap. Were he in any other state of mind, he probably would`ve been downright irate.   
  
He just died, Shadow answered again, as blunt and uncaring as a sledge hammer.   
  
Kale blinked. For the first time since his battle with Bit Cloud, he was genuinely _surprised_ by something, if only because Harabec had had the utter _indecency_ to go and die by someone _else`s_ hand. Now caught without a mixture of annoyance and something vaguely akin to remorse, he let out a sigh, took one last sip of his drink and then proceeded to pour it out as if it were alchohol being dumped onto a coffin or a tombstone.   
  
"Too bad," he commented, tossing aside the empty bottle and then grabbing his gloves from where they`d been crammed under his arm, first pulling on the left, then the right. "Looks like he`s going to go down in history as the only person to beat me and be killed by someone else. Pity, really," he said, so emotionlessly that it was perplexing even to the Organoid standing across from him.   
  
What now? Shadow asked, eager to avoid having to waste any _more_ time in this piss bucket of a town in the middle of no where. Are you going to grieve for him or something?   
  
"Nah," Kale answered with a shrug. "I grieve more that I wasn`t the one to kill him."   
  
Then what do you plan to do? Are we through toying around, or do you want to risk someone else killing Fleiheit`s descendent?   
  
"Well... I suppose it`s time to stop playing around then," Kale replied, straightening up from the side of the building and nodding to Shadow so that the Organoid would follow. "As for what I plan to do right now..."   
  
There was a pause as the Maxis stepped into view from an unspoken command, optics glimmering ever so slightly while Kale took the towel from around his neck and tossed it aside, looking up at his own private Demon with a grin.   
  
"I trust I`ve kept you `n` Fido waiting long enough, haven`t I?" He asked, walking towards the Zoid with a barely noticable swagger to his steps, cocky, but not unguarded. Shadow gave the mental equivelent of a cracked grin at the tone of Kale`s voice, the Organoid`s optics already starting to glimmer with a slow build-up of energy from within.   
  
Yes. You have, he replied, which the Maxis promptly seconded with a growl, both optics starting to light up to an even bloodier red than before. Kale`s smirk deadened after a few seconds, fading from casually murderous relaxation to dead seriousness. His eyes almost became a shade darker, and his hair promptly seemed to obscure and overshadow the vast majority of his face, head hung low all of the sudden.   
  
"Burn it to the ground. Not a single survivor."   
  
The Maxis` head blade flipped forward accordingly, claws already glowing.   
  
"I`ll wait here. When you`re finished..."   
  
Shadow`s eyes seemed to turn into hot, hellishly blue torches, a black light starting to outline the Organoid`s body while its wings snapped out into view, arching straight up.   
  
"We`re going after Bit Cloud."   
  
A slow smile formed, infinitely more dangerous than the simple smirk he`d had on his face earlier. It was the only detail on his face not hidden by his hair or the darkness of the late evening, and as it did, Shadow and the Geno Maxis _both_ began their respective rampages.   
  
"You fuckers can tell Harabec good-bye for me," he muttered at no one in particular, angrily flaring his nostrils in memory of the old veteran who had, for the most part, humiliated him in his first true hour of glory.   
  
Suffice to say, the town wouldn`t be standing much longer.   
  
  
"Ever get the feeling that we`re just pawns in some game we don`t even know is being played?"   
  
"Nope," Kyle answered bluntly, not really sure _how_ to handle Mark anymore. The two had grown to be the best of friends(and technically enemies as well, but that was just a _minor_ detail), yes, but even accounting for how brotherly they had become, neither had ever exactly dealt with the other after one had just lost a family member.   
  
Not to mention the city that one of them had called home for several years now, the same city that the family member in question had _died_ defending. The same city that had once boasted a population of well over a million people from all walks of life. The same city that had just had that entire population _wiped out_ in under an hour.   
  
Kyle wasn`t even really sure if there were any other survivors at all. He didn`t even know if Katherine, Abbie and that autistic kid had made it out alive. All he really knew was that his Zoid was just a few steps shy of being shot right to Hell and his remaining team mate had been almost mute for the past ten to fifteen minutes. Even the Shadow Fox had its head lowered, those charcoal optics dimmed imperceptibly.   
  
The only sounds audible for a half a mile in any direction seemed to be those of the two lone Zoids that were limping away from the warzone that had once been Farentown. It was mind numbing, to say the least.   
  
"Same," Mark finally replied with the same glum tone he`d had for the few times he`d spoken in the last few minutes.   
  
"A bath`d be nice right about now," Kyle changed the subject clumsily, just trying to avoid any more quiet. Besides, staring at one`s feet and trying to think of things you could`ve done differently _wasn`t_ going to do them any good right now.   
  
"... Mlegh," Mark sounded out blandly, at least bothering to join in the conversation. "I`d rather have something to eat... Or Abbie in a schoolgirl outfit..."   
  
"... I didn`t need to know that," Kyle muttered, though his thoughts were of a slightly different nature. _"Least his sense of humor hasn`t been wiped out..."   
  
_ "... Edible panties..."   
  
There was the nearly muted sound of what appeared to be saliva dripping onto the floor.   
  
_ "... Okay, so maybe the shock just hasn`t set in fully yet,"_ Kyle thought with a tone sour enough to match the blankly sardonic look on his face.   
  
"Don`t suppose you have anything _normal_ to talk about, huh?" He asked, trying to change to a subject that _didn`t_ instantly render thoughts of Katherine into his brain. Despite being considered the 'sensitive' member of the Suicide Team - primarily due to misconceptions made by younger women because of his looks and sometimes articulate nature - Kyle Mazemia was still a guy. He still had male urges, to say the least.   
  
"... Gee, the world`s effectively come to an end, my hometown just got blown to shit, my uncle just died and I have no idea where the fuck my girlfriend and my seemingly adopted son are - or if they`re even _alive_. Got anything _normal_ to talk about?" Mark asked with a _lot_ more bitterness than he had probably intended.   
  
"... Point taken," Kyle replied in surrender. "Wanna talk about _that_ then?" He asked, finally giving up on trying to avoid the topic all together. He _needed_ some damned conversation, even if it _was_ negative.   
  
"Not really."   
  
"You don`t even seem phased by it," Kyle only half-lied. Mark wasn`t taking the bait.   
  
"_Whatever_. Just _drop it_ before I shoot you," he growled, though the threat was likely about as empty as his voice had started to sound.   
  
"Right," Kyle finally sighed, giving up and resigning himself to hearing nothing but the sounds of the Zoids and his own thinking. It was still just as mind numbing as it had been before, but now it was equally depressing as well. He had just run out on one ally, and now it felt as if he might have just _failed_ another.   
  
And that was when he picked up a single blip on his scanners, identified clearly as a lone Gustav, exactly three miles away.   
  
"Nice to have _something_ going right tonight..."   
  
  
_ "My..."   
  
** Pain**_. It hurt just to _think_ anymore, the world had turned from being displayed to him in so many colors he could scarcely comprehend it all to being blanked out by a red, agonized haze.   
  
_ "My eye..."   
  
_ The assailant was gone. Dead, in fact. Henry had seen to that much personally, it was why he was currently having even more trouble balancing than he would have otherwise. The reason was that his attack on the little smiling _bastard_ had completely _annihilated_ the area in front of him. It was literally nothing more than a burnt-out, glassed over crater, smoldering so hotly that most of it still tinged a smoking orange, even as the top layers started to actually slop towards the center.   
  
_ "... It hurts..."   
  
_ It hadn`t been _enough_.   
  
After several more seconds, the Hellwalker`s mouth started to close at last, the gun retracting into its throat with a slow precision. Both pairs of legs, unevenly placed as they now were, started automatically taking the colossal Demon out of the edge of the crater in reverse. Guns across the body swiveled to point into what could best be considered neutral for each and every one of them, ranging from pointing straight ahead to simply sliding into previously unnoticed concealing ports.   
  
But the pain could still be felt as clearly as it had been just before Henry had fired.   
  
It still hadn`t been enough.   
  
_ "How can it still **hurt**?"   
  
_ According to the injury of his external left eye, the crystallized, Core cell pit where his biological left eye had once been now began to trickle out a fluid that could be mistaken for tears. In truth, it was the kind of liquid that flowed around in most unnatural Zoid Cores, used to help circulate energy and lower heat levels. It was the equivelent of blood.   
  
He was _bleeding_.   
  
He had poured almost _all_ of his main firepower into that attack, his new body was exhausted, and the city that he had wiped from the face of Zi was little more than a burnt memory of his first true success in years.   
  
But it _still_ hadn`t been _enough_.   
  
_ "**WHY DOES IT HURT LIKE THIS?!**"   
  
_ In his agony, the Hellwalker reared back a bit more and threw its head to the sky, roaring out what sounded more like a human scream than anything else. The Rev Raptor`s scythe, or what was left of it, remained lodged in place, still sparking electricity from the damaged Demon`s eye.   
  
  
** [**_The world had turned apocalyptically dark as the two great Demons confronted each other, the skies burning a pitched black and red. Each towered over the surrounding landscape, scarred and viciously pockmarked as it was after years on end of seemingly futile violence. Bodies, most of them burnt or crushed to something resembling pulp, were strewn about the brutalized countryside, and the lone fortress that had dared to even **exist** in the area had been turned to nothing but shattered dreams and broken debris, piling high in some places, dipping into low craters in others.   
  
But in the eyes of a child, everything took a backseat. She had never known her father, he was one of those few sane men who **hadn`t** initially joined in the bloodletting, long enough that she had been born in the first place, but he had still eventually fallen to the wrath of the conflict. She didn`t even know why it had started, nor did she even care to find out.   
  
Her mother lay dead on the ground in front of her, the body covered in a mixture of blood and ash. What was **left** of it, anyway. The woman`s Organoid was in much the same shape, having been blown open in numerous parts of its formerly sleek, blue body.   
  
Tears streaked down the little girl`s face, but even in this darkest of hours, some form of hope still tried to defy fate and live in the face of adversity. She could hear the words, spoken in a language that seemed to falter in between her own and another that sounded more like insane gibberish than anything else, sounding off in her mind as if it had been composed of a million or more different voices all at once, each perfectly identifiable from the next, but each blending together to an absurd degree.   
  
Her own Organoid stood nearby, shoulders visibly slumped, arms hanging out in front of it. Shock had set in for the creature, its normally blue colorscheme having started to shift to a checkered red, though its original black coloring was still slightly visible. It was part of the growing process for an Organoid, changing colors and the like, but it didn`t matter.   
  
It seemed all that mattered were the two Demons who stood across from one another in the horror of the Zoidian Endtimes.   
  
They contrasted to each other in a sharp way, but they were still similar despite it. One of them was a near solid black with numerous red panels and silver, eerily polished feet, claws and teeth, mounting a full fledged arsenal within and upon its body. The other was a slightly taller beast, mixing colors between solid black, clawed hands and feet, several enormous blue panels, three gigantic cannons of various types upon its chest and a colossal white body, all of which contrasted to the great red crest standing upon its head.   
  
The two were nearly the same size, though the white one was larger and perhaps even more imposing because of it. They were both bipedal with long, thick tails and vicious orange-and-red eyes, and they shared a seemingly oblivious mindset in regard to the countless hapless dead that lay all around them, finding themselves equally ignorant of the single, silver colored streak that blurred between them, trying and failing to find any form of reason with them.   
  
They stood there like that for what felt like an eternity. Countless fires burned around them, twin moons of blood began to set in the distance, but the sun refused to rise. It seemed to be, almost like anyone and anything else, holding its breath as the intensity of the staredown continued to escalate, so much so that it seemed like all it would take was a single gust of extra wind to set the two tyrants at each other`s throats.   
  
Still, the little girl and her twisted looking Organoid stood there, neither of them even finding the emotional wherewithall to bother with shedding anymore tears. Each of them looked like renegades from a horrible dream, one wearing tattered, blood and soot stained rags, the other looking as if it had just gone off the deep end and wouldn`t be coming back anytime soon.   
  
They watched in the morbid fascination of the damned and the dying as the slightly larger Demon blinked first.   
  
The Death Saurer threw its head back with a feral cry, the charged particle intake fan on its back spinning like a tornado as energy built up inside of its newly opened mouth, eyes glaring a hideous shade of red and orange alike.   
  
The other Demon just stood there, watching and waiting with a methodical, other worldly patience, while the lone streak of silver blurring about between them finally seemed to give up, the countless voices belonging to it all fading into nothingness. The streak formed up into a sphere and then tore away from the two would-be combatants.   
  
Reva and Boris just stood there, watching with glassy, wide eyes.   
  
The Death Saurer took a step forward with an alarming quickness for its size, the ground shook for a mile all around and its head came back down, the charged particle cannon within its mouth fired along with it. The larger Demon stood still as the beam approached and dozens of times the speed of sound, the windsheer alone equalling and surpassing the raw force of a category five hurricane with horrific ease.   
  
The beam struck the other Demon squarely in the face and kept going, blazing a hot, deathly trail through the sky, standing out against the background of the red and black clouds that blotted out any sunrise and allowed only for scant views of the moons.   
  
For a moment, it seemed as if the battle had ended before it had even begun. The white Demon`s head and crest were completely obscured by the blow, but the Death Saurer kept firing, sustaining the beam beyond any real need for it.   
  
And then the entire thing seemed to shatter like glass from a roar powerful enough to cause the little girl`s ears to bleed, blowing tons of debris into the air and threatening to take her along with it. Not that it mattered much, the effects of a charged particle wave were probably enough to liquify her where she stood.   
  
At least they would have, if not for a sudden impact to her side. Boris numbly took off into a sprint as the seemingly paralyzed little girl was carried off, tucked under someone`s arm as they ran for **some** cover, if there was even any **left** to begin with._**]**   
  
A groan sounded out from beneath the cover of a thinly made sleeping bag on a haphazardly laid out futon pad in the middle of a hangar in Champton.   
  
** [**_Finally, the girl yelled something out in the Zoidian tongue, though it was inaudible against the background noise of the charged particle beam, which was now literally **shattering** in every directions, though the lion`s share of its power flew right back into the Death Saurer`s face, knocking the colossal Zoid off balance for all of a second. Even its own power was unable to destroy it though, and the doom machine recovered with ease, though not without a sudden, telepathic nosedive in its morale.   
  
The larger Demon finally halted its death scream, though the clouds directly above now sported a hole, and the ground around its feet had been imploded into a shallow, wide crater that reached all the way to the smaller Death Saurer and the edges of the newly **re**-slagged remains of the fortress. Both Zoids seemed to freeze before the equivelent of a telepathic smile echoed into the mind of the little girl, even as she, her would-be savior and Boris hid in a smaller crater that had just become a foxhole. The charged particle wave had passed right over them.   
  
Whether their survival was a miracle or a curse of fate, she didn`t know.   
  
The main cannon on the larger Demon`s chest suddenly began to spin, all three barrels promptly glowing red at the tips. The Death Saurer replied in kind, making the first move again and raking across the other Zoid`s neck with gunfire from its snout, but it was an utterly futile effort.   
  
The Death Saurer rocked back again, countless shallow trenches and pits blowing into existence across the front of its body from lasers powerful enough to level entire mountains. It faltered even more from the abuse, turning to the side in a bid to keep its body from being shot straight through, but the lasers had stopped by then. Each of the dual cannons that set to either side of the laser gattling promptly blew into life once again, firing out bolts of plasma-packed **death** into the air and gouging out deep holes into the Death Saurer`s neck.   
  
But the larger Demon stopped shot of firing again. It was obvious that it could end the battle at any time, but it held off on doing so with a methodical, insane desire to prolong the smaller Demon`s suffering, as if to gain revenge for the slaughter that **it** had probably **helped** to cause.   
  
Finally, the Death Saurer recovered, and the larger Demon began to move forward, slow at first, but gaining speed at an alarming rate. Despite the fact that **both** of the Zoids were each **well over** seventeen hundred feet tall, both were unbelievably fast and agile when they wanted to be, and right now, they were proving that fact with terrifying ease. Within seconds, the larger Zoid had closed to within half a mile of the smaller, but by then, the Death Saurer had taken its own steps into action.   
  
A yellow and orange glow shot through the arm across its tail, the smaller Demon moved forward one step and then sharply turned around, bending forward and swinging its tail at the incoming Hunter-Killer like a colossal whip, the energy shooting off like some cliched energy bolt from a sword.   
  
The attack hit home, crashing into the incoming Demon with enough force to sheer off the upper half of Mount Everest with ease, but it stopped cold and blew apart in an explosion on contact with the white armor of the larger monster, who kept coming as if completely unscathed.   
  
What happened next simply had to be **seen** to belive._**]**   
  
The light blue Command Wolf that stood nearby shifted imperceptibly, its head turning to look down at sleeping bag, which now seemed to shift around as if the petitely built person inside was twisting about in her sleep.   
  
** [**_The charged particle intake fan on the Death Saurer`s back crumpled like tin foil from a swift headbutt, but the smaller Demon whipped around again with a backhand. The larger of the two seemed taken aback by the unexpected resistance, however little damage it had actually done. Shards of the Saurer`s clawed hand had flown off from the impact, **it** had taken more damage in making the attack than the target it had been trying to take out in the first place.   
  
The Death Saurer took a similar slap in the face in retaliation, jarring half of its numerous guns loose in the process. The black, clawed hand whipped back from the first strike, cracking across the Saurer`s shoulder on the comeback before a second such hand grabbed onto the side of the smaller Demon`s head.   
  
The two shared angry roars, though there was an **obvious** tinge of desperation and fear in that of the Death Saurer, its hands both locking around the forearm of its would-be assassin, trying to pry the grappling hand loose from its neck.   
  
If the larger Demon could laugh, it would`ve been cackling like a lunatic by now.   
  
But since it couldn`t, it settled for drawing its free arm back as far as it could go. For a few seconds, the two Zoids froze into place, the Saurer struggling to escape its fate, the larger Demon taking a sadistic pleasure in delaying it just a **little** longer.   
  
And then, it was over.   
  
The Hunter-Killer let loose, yanking its first arm away and taking a chunk of the Death Saurer`s neck off in the process, breaking the already damaged arm and almost pulling the smaller Zoid off of its feet. **Almost**, if not for the sudden stop that came when its other hand plunged **straight through** countless layers of once-impervious seeming armor as if it were tin foil caught in the path of a sledge hammer, ripping into the Saurer with ease.   
  
And then, they stood like that. The smaller Demon let out a death cry before the larger began to lift it from the ground, initially using only **one arm** to do it, then adding the other almost as an after thought.   
  
The Death Saurer`s tail hung limply to the ground, its legs and arms alike following suit. The larger assassin heaved it up, bending back onto its own tail to support the extra thousands of tons it now supported in addition to its own massive weight, and then, almost carelessly, tossed the Saurer up into the air before attacking the dying creature with a lightning attack of its own. It straightened up before the other Zoid had even finished ascending from the ground, then whipped around before lashing across the Death Saurer with its tail, shattering both the sound barrier and most of the remaining armor on the other Zoid`s body.   
  
The Death Saurer landed awkwardly on its feet and tail, its eyes dimming rapidly and its jaw starting to sag as smoke began to billow from the hole in its chest, a massive trench having formed across its body. Still, the other Demon wasn`t finished yet, grappling onto the Saurer one more time, as if to prevent it from having anything **remotely** akin to an easy death on its feet.   
  
Again, the smaller Zoid was heaved up from the ground, this time by its waist, and again, the larger Demon bent back to compensate. This time though, it started pressing in, crushing and imploding what little remained of armor on the Saurer`s sides with ease before turning around and flinging the smaller Demon into the air once again, this time allowing it to fly freely for a mile or more before crashing into the ground at a disgusting angle.   
  
Its neck broke on impact, one arm ripped off and countless parts of its main body crumpled inward in too many places to describe as a result._**]**   
  
"Nnnnguhf..."   
  
** [**_Its victory cemented into place, the King Gojulas roared with pride at its newest handywork, having virtually **curbstomped** the same Death Saurer that would one day level most of Guygalos in the same way that it had trashed the fortress that would one day become the foundations for the Project X Facility that would begin its own rebirth.   
  
Satisfied with this, the King turned away and began to walk off, oblivious as ever to the countless lives shattered before and after its latest kill and intent only upon continuing to hunt down and destroy as many other Demons as possible, regardless of the consequences.   
  
And in their foxhole, Boris and Reva finally bothered to look up from the dirt, though they were too late to see much of their savior other than her backside as she started to climb out and survey the area._**]**   
  
"Can`t sleep," the bag`s occupant finally grumbled out, the entire thing flopping into its proper top-up, bottom-down position before curving up at an awkward looking right angle, then opening to reveal a girl who was physically around the age of fifteen, blue hair hanging down from her head in a mixture of straight and orderly and knotted chaos, several strands sticking out at odd angles here and there. Her sleepy looking eyes were still shifting colors as always, going from blue to red to green and back again every few seconds.   
  
The Command Wolf growled idly, turning away from its new pilot and owner, back to staring straight ahead at the Blade Liger Simulacrum standing in front of it, and beyond that, the hangar door. Suffice to say, the IS was bored at the moment, and Leyla could vaguely register the emotion with some sympathy in reply.   
  
"We`ll see some action soon," she mumbled up at the Zoid, seeming, more or less, unphased by the fitful dream she`d just had. Not that it wasn`t something she had become _used to_ by now, she`d been having random flashbacks and dreams about her original life ever since the incident that had cost her her career as a ZBC-approved Zoid pilot in the first place. The flashbacks were easier to handle though, they were usually things she didn`t even consciously realize until after the fact, but the dreams were usually a little more unsettling.   
  
"But for now, I need a drink..."   
  
And with that, clad in nothing but the same clothes she had gotten into after taking her shower at the end of the day, she stood up. Her socks, boots, gloves, utility belt and sleeveless overshirt were all left to sit on the hangar floor next to her mattress, and with no real thought given to them, she walked off towards the small part of the hangar that most of the pilots and mechanics alike reserved for brief stops in their shifts, ranging from a quick, microwaved snack to getting a sip of water.   
  
Thankfully, the hangar was mostly silent right now. Only a few other pilots had either wanted or been forced to sleep in it, and most of them belonged to either Hacksaw or some other squad, and almost all of them were either asleep or reading something by flashlight or from a handheld. One or two might have been listening to headphones, but the vast majority were out like lights.   
  
The hangar itself was also rather dimly lit right now, only barely well enough that a normal person would`ve been able to find their way around. Moonlight filtered through several windows in the roof, but that was about it, and it was also all that Leyla really needed to get around anyway.   
  
Soundlessly, she crept across the chilled metal flooring, pausing occasionally for a stretch here or a yawn and scratch there, but mostly finding her way to the small kitchenette-like area at the corner of the gigantic room, where she was promptly greeted by the sight of one of her squadmates in his pajamas, sipping coffee right out of the pot.   
  
"Evenin`," she greeted dimly, not even feeling like chastising him for it. There wasn`t much coffee left in the thing anyway. Regardless, the guy froze in mid-sip like a deer caught in headlights, lowering the pot back down.   
  
"Couldn`t sleep either?" She asked, going straight for the jury-rigged bottled soda machine. No money was required to operate it, thankfully, the Champs tended to throw around creature comforts for their employees like that. It was half the reason the pilots in the hangar had futon mats to lay their sleeping bags out on in the first place.   
  
"Nah... It`s a trick for helping to wake up," he answered blithely, continuing before she could ask what he meant. "Chug down as much water or whatever else you can find before you go to bed, then wake up and you`ll have to use the bathroom. Wakes ya right up," he explained.   
  
"Ah... Why use coffee?" She asked, grabbing an orange soda from the dispenser.   
  
"Cuz it tastes like piss and I`m a glutton for punishment," he answered, drawing a slight chuckle out of her. "My names Jack, by the way," he added, not sure if she remembered having met him or not. "I`m the BL-Sim pilot."   
  
"Nice Zoid," she commented, unscrewing the cap with a fizzled pop of compressed air and bubbling liquid.   
  
"Not bad yourself," he replied.   
  
For a while longer, neither bothered speaking. They didn`t exactly have anything to talk about as it was, but as the moments ticked by, Leyla bothered to study him a bit further, in detail this time. She had done the same with Paxton and the other members of Hacksaw Squad when given the chance, it was something of a base instinct to give people the twice over for her. Aside from wearing glasses and having messy, light brown hair and plain green eyes, there really wasn`t much to him. He was a bit on the tall side, bore an even tan and looked as if he was just starting to learn that critical life lesson that some men only really started to get the hang of when in their teens.   
  
Said life lesson was that it was better to shave with the lights _on_, otherwise one would risk having several cuts on his jaw and chin like Jack did. Apparently, he probably wasn`t one for cutting his hair too often either, since it hung down to his shoulders.   
  
After a few more minutes of both just standing there, sipping their respective drinks like lazy bums, Jack finally spoke up, setting the empty pot down on the counter as he did so.   
  
"Walk ya back?" He asked with an _obviously_ mock-gentleman`s tone of voice.   
  
"... It`s just a walk to a futon pad," Leyla replied with the glum, naive look of a girl whose social skills had likely been more than _slightly_ blunted by her years as Paul Tsun`s adoptive, overly protected daughter.   
  
"... And my pad`s just a few yards past it, your point?" He asked, mimicking her tone accordingly. Finally, Leyla shrugged, not really sure if she had been beaten or given the victory in a half-assed arguement that she couldn`t even tell whether or not had ever happened to begin with.   
  
"Quite the charmer, aren`t you?" She finally mumbled, walking off towards her Command Wolf with Jack in tow.   
  
  
"... _What_?" Abbie asked sourly, not even believing her own ears. Maybe it had been some sort of overblown screw-up in the comm unit. Considering how many ways Mark had screwed around with both the Gustav _and_ the Shadow Fox, it was possible, right?   
  
"Dead," Kyle repeated, sparing his younger team mate the hassle. Both the Fox and the Liger now flanked the Gustav in guard positions, taken up several minutes before, when they had initially spotted the lone Zoid transport out in the middle of nowhere, aimlessly trucking along with no real sense of direction to it. Smoke from the burning remains of what had once been Farentown still managed to blot out part of the night sky, but the twin moons were at least visible now, glowing a hollow shade of orange down onto the souls of the desert.   
  
For a few seconds, there was silence from the other end of the comm. Mark spoke up again, his voice carrying a smoother edge than the antagonistic manner that had been in it when he and Kyle were still looking for the Gustav.   
  
"It probably isn`t comforting but... He went out with a bang and bought us time to out alive. All of us."   
  
Kyle sighed at Abbie`s less-than-coherent response of sniffles and utterances. Kat took the comm.   
  
"Give us a minute to get re-situated," she ordered, obviously having to steer the Gustav from the passenger`s seat with one hand. Abbie`s sounds faded after a few seconds, Kyle registered the sound of someone else plopping into the driver`s seat after the Gustav started to lose speed, only to regain it. It now trailed slightly behind the other two Zoids, but only until a burst of speed put it back up to par with them.   
  
"Alright. I won`t ask what happened, Kyle can tell me later," she explained, trying to limit Mark and Abbie from having to learn or recollect anymore than they had to for the time being. "I just know we have a hundred or more refugees tucked into the cargo containers and they`re probably gonna be _baked_ in there if we don`t get them somewhere else by tomorrow."   
  
Kyle knew she was probably overestimating the damage that could be caused. If the people could be baked in there, the fires back in the city would`ve done them in. Still, they _did_ have to find food and shelter, and the nearest city was roughly a hundred or more miles away...   
  
"Mark," he began, striking on an odd bit of inspiration.   
  
"What?" The other Suicide Team member asked dryly, though not as badly as his voice had been earlier. It seemed that the will to be an asshat was starting to drain out of him for the time being, and Kyle honestly didn`t know if that was good or bad.   
  
"You know where the Blitz Team base is, right?" The older pilot asked curiously.   
  
"I could probably find it blindfolded. Place sticks out like a sore thumb," Mark answered with what sounded like a nonchalant shrug. Kyle smirked to himself imperceptibly, speaking up once more, this time with the same tone as he`d often used during their verbal sparring matches.   
  
"Get your ass out front then, newb, you`re leadin` the way."   
  
Even though Mark didn`t respond in any audible way, the Shadow Fox did, issuing out a synthesized growl and trotting up ahead of the Gustav, though still hanging off to the right by a few yards. Reflexively, Kyle and the Ivory Liger dropped back a bit, slowing down long enough to get behind the Gustav`s second trailer and then falling into line there, acting as a rear guard.   
  
Even with its numerous injuries, the Liger still carried itself like a proud, laid back king, and even with his own numerous cuts and bruises, Kyle did the same, leaning back in the seat and taking his hands from the controls with a tired yawn. While it was true that he had lost a fairly good friend in Harabec, and something of a new home away from home with the annihilation of Farentown, he wasn`t letting it get to him. Not yet, anyway.   
  
Too many people were counting on him. The same was likely true for Katherine. Both of them were the only ones who _hadn`t_ lost just about everything, they were pretty much obligated to keep their heads screwed on straight, whether they liked it or not.   
  
And Kyle, if nothing else, _didn`t like it one bit_. That, if nothing else, forced him to stay awake, rather than ceding to the exhaustion of having survived a battle with the first true _Demon_ ever made by _human beings_. Not that he knew the true history behind the Hellwalker`s designation as such, he probably wouldn`t have even cared if he did.   
  
_ "This sucks,"_ he thought bluntly, resting his hands in his lap and resisting the urge to stretch his legs for fear of what it might do to aggrevate his bruised up knees.   
  
And that was when the scanner went off, followed within a split second by a pop-up screen of Mark`s face. For the first time since the battle had taken place, Kyle got the chance to see his now glassy-eyed comrade`s mug, which was only barely slick down either cheek. It looked as if he had shed a few tears, wiped his eyes and moved on like nothing had ever happened.   
  
"We got company," he stated bluntly. Kyle only nodded.   
  
"Looks like one Zoid, standing a couple miles back from us. Can`t confirm what it is, but it doesn`t look like its weapons are hot," the older of the two replied, putting his gloved hands back onto the joysticks, eyes feeling a bit heavier than usual.   
  
"Want me to check it out?" Mark asked, looking, more or less, as if he would have gone anyway. Again, Kyle took control, knowing that under normal circumstances, he would`ve probably had to fight tooth and nail to do it.   
  
"No. I`ll go, your Zoid`s in better shape and you`re needed to navigate anyway. Keep your scanner active though, and don`t wait up on me."   
  
"If you get left behind," Mark began, as if oblivious to the very real possibility that Kyle was going to be up against a potential enemy that neither of the two knew _anything_ about. "Just keep going west until you find a set of mountains. Then look for a rock archway just southeast of them."   
  
"Will do, good luck," Kyle replied as the banged up Ivory Liger turned off, breaking into a haggard sprint towards the source of the ping on his scanner. Mark didn`t bother replying.   
  
  
"Not ready to sleep either, huh?" Leon asked casually, stepping into the lobby. He had finally changed out of his piloting gear, having switched over to the old light purple t-shirt worn under a dark brown, open jacket and dark blue jeans. He was still wearing the same boots he always wore, but it was probably the first time in months that he had donned his actual _civilian clothing_. The last time he had put it on was the night before he`d left the Blitz Team.   
  
Naomi shrugged, uneffected by his question. The second-floor lobby of Champton`s air port was hardly the place most people would pick to spend the night, but in comparison to most of the other places in and around the city and its protective fortress, the lobby was virtually empty. The only reason that Leon had even known where to find her was because they tended to think in alarmingly similar ways when they wanted something, and right now, both seemed to just want some peace and quiet.   
  
"Hope you don`t mind the company," he said, though Naomi still hadn`t bothered to look over her shoulder by the time he had indicated the sleeping bag tucked under his arm, which was promptly chucked into a corner and left there.   
  
"Just so long as you don`t talk as loudly as your sister," she cracked. Her tone of voice seemed a bit off though, and the oldest of the Tauros siblings was keen to pick up on it.   
  
"Something wrong?" He asked, stepping around to the front of the padded bench that she was settled on, her arms casually slung over the back of it, head craned back and to the side slightly, legs crossed in a ladylike sort of way in front of her. She was still wearing the clothes she`d left Romeo City in.   
  
"Can`t keep a secret from you, huh?" She shot back with a half-smirk. Leon was unamused.   
  
"Naomi," he began. "I know your bra size, I can guess when you`re about to go on your period two weeks in advance, I know you own two sniper rifles, an assault rifle and five handguns, _and_ I know you prefer your tea and coffee _both_ hot enough to sear most people`s tastebuds off - _except_ every afternoon on Thursday. I also know you have a closet love for the color pink and you owned a pet cat named 'Timmy,'" he exclaimed with all the enthusiasm of a man who was about to be shot in the face. Naomi only chuckled at him.   
  
"Nope, no secrets," she said with a shake of the head. Leon plopped down next to her, automatically making himself at home by throwing his head back onto the top of the bench, stretching his legs out and crossing his arms over his chest.   
  
"So what`s bothering you?" Leon asked once again, staring at the ceiling. Naomi was the opposite, staring out at the appealing view of the Champton airfield at night.   
  
"Aside from going on twenty minute naps since we got here, dealing with an attack where I couldn`t do a damn thing because of a system freeze and then having your sister kidnapped by a Gojulas on crack only to show back up early in the morning a few hours later as if _nothing_ had happened..."   
  
Naomi trailed off with a sigh. It hadn`t helped matters when Leena had started having headaches after having _somehow_ managing to pick out flaws in a half-dozen Zoids that had gone completely unnoticed by even the best of the local mechanics.   
  
"Stressed out then?" Leon asked, shifting his head back upright and glancing out at the landing pads, most of which were filled to capacity by more than a dozen Whale Kings in total, moonlight shimmering down on each one.   
  
"Guess so," Naomi shrugged. "But it`s not just that... Earlier this morning, I kinda... I don`t know. It felt like I was gonna cry for no reason, and after that, I`ve just felt like there`s been this pit in my chest all day," she explained grimly. For a woman as level-headed and stable as Naomi to mention something that borderlined on a breakdown, Leon _knew_ that something had happened.   
  
"Maybe it`s just the stress of everything catching up to you," he suggested, though it was really more of a flat-out statement. "I mean... Every country on Zi`s pretty much gone to Hell for the past month or so, we`ve all been through battles for our lives... Travelling even more than usual, protecting people... Maybe last night and today were just the straws that broke the camel`s back?" He wondered. Naomi simply gave him a sideways glare.   
  
"Then when did _you_ break down over nothing? _You`ve_ been through _way_ more than I have lately," she pointed out. It was an obvious reference to how similar the two were, and an equally obvious reference to how different they could be at the same time.   
  
"Didn`t," he shrugged. "And if I did, I was too busy to notice it. Or asleep."   
  
"Dink."   
  
"No comment," he retorted. Again, Naomi shifted, this time moving her arms from the back of the bench with a yawn, then uncrossing her legs and stretching out in every direction at once. Intentionally or unintentionally, she whacked Leon over the head with an elbow, drawing an annoyed glance as a result.   
  
"I don`t know... Just feels like I lost something before I even got it," she commented, scooting back into her seat and crossing her arms over her chest, just beneath the bustline. "Sort of... Between disappointment, outright sadness and something else. Go figure."   
  
A few seconds inched by, and then, Naomi felt Leon`s leather covered arm drape itself around her shoulders in a warm, brotherly embrace. She sighed, giving him another sideways glance, the only reply to which was a squeeze that brought the two a bit closer.   
  
"How`re the lunatics doing?" She asked, changing the subject with all the skill of a rabid pitbull that had just been nailed with a tranquilizer.   
  
"Leena`s conked out on Harry`s bed... _He`s_ staying on the _couch_," Leon began, his tone instantly souring at the mention of his sister`s virtually obsessive suitor. Naomi smirked tiredly, but he continued. "And Sarah`s managed to convince Dad and Leyon to take a break from flinging verbal shit at each other long enough to take a shower, eat something and go to sleep... And Sarah`s still on the job, so to speak, she`s mentioned something about going to bed in another hour or two when I last spoke to her..."   
  
Leon trailed off. He didn`t do it because he had run out of things to talk about, mind you, he had done it because the figure he had wrapped his arm around had just turned from a conscious body to the equivelent of a dead weight leaned against his side. Straightening up slightly, his expression changed from that of a tired pilot and concerned older brother to a silly little smile that edged his lips upright _just_ enough to be visible.   
  
_ "Guess she was more exhausted than she thought,"_ he wondered, feeling her head drop onto the front of his shoulder, and hearing the change as her breathing shifted into the deeper, more relaxed pattern of heavy sleep. Regardless, he just hoped she managed to get more than twenty minutes this time, even if it meant having to sit there all night with her to do it.   
  
"Sleep good," he mumbled as an afterthought, allowing his mind to wander off to other things.   
  
  
_ "I never should have left this place..."   
  
_ There was no arguement. Only silence. He was alone now, standing in the hangar and staring out into the evening sky. He could see smoke in the distance, but only just barely, and even then, it was only because several of the brighter stars had been blotted out by it. The Raynos stood nearby, wings spread in an eerie stance. It was the only Zoid in the hangar, just like he was the only person in the base. There were marks outside, scorched into the pavement. Footprints resembling those of a Geno Saurer, but slightly longer and thicker in the toe area.   
  
Whoever had been here last, they had at least had the decency to shut the door into the main hallway on their way out, even if they probably hadn`t locked it. Not that it was ever _locked_ to begin with since most people, the Tauros family and his other team mates included, would`ve figured that your average bandit would both _not_ be looking for an unoccupied base in the middle of the desert, and even if they were, they`d`ve had to plow through the thick, reinforced doors protecting the actual hangar itself, and by default, the door into the actual _base_.   
  
Logical, really. Someone had just been too _illogical_ to go along with it.   
  
_ "... Should I have ever even come here at all?"_ He wondered quietly, the silence in his head proving to be more deafening than any arguement he`d ever had. As bitter as he was to admit it, he missed the company, even if he`d never quite been able to stand the Wild Eagle`s personality. It was eerie, being alone in his own thoughts. Before, he`d always been able to count on Will to pick on him whenever he went idle, give him a reason to do something, even give him a bar to measure himself by.   
Now, he was so alone that he could barely even think for himself. He couldn`t even remember why he`d returned to the Blitz Team base to begin with, it wasn`t like the place had ever been much of a help to him...   
  
_ "I guess it was just... Instinct or something,"_ he reasoned dimly, turning away from staring at the night sky and, after a parting glance over his shoulder, walking towards the door into the living room. Or was it the hallway that _lead_ to almost every room in the base? It felt like it had been so long, he`d forgotten his own home`s layout.   
  
His own home.   
  
What a joke.   
  
_ "Beats sleeping in the Raynos. I think,"_ he reasoned again, slinging his duffle bag over his shoulder as he got to the doorway, which he promptly opened up. Just as he`d been wondering, the door lead into the central hallway of the facility, which was a bit dustier than usual, and a bit colder as well. Not that he cared much for the cold, but the dust probably would`ve bothered him if he hadn`t been so apathetic to reality. His normal, sometimes obsessive attitude about keeping things clean just didn`t matter anymore.   
  
After a few seconds, he felt his skin start to form goose bumps. It was colder than he`d thought, but it still didn`t bother him.   
  
Another three or four minutes went by in the same blind haze he`d been living in since he`d left his parents` home, and as he stopped by the living room and took a quick look around, he never even bothered to look at the picture on the wall with the knife lodged into it, the edge splitting the paper at Brad`s face. It was just a minor detail, he didn`t really care.   
  
Again, he ducked back into the hallway, continuing onward until he arrived at the bedrooms, or what was at least the bedroom of the Blitz Team`s ex-mercenary. The door was open, leaving Brad`s quiet, reflective living space exposed to the teen`s view. It was probably the first time in almost a year or more that he`d even seen past the doorway, and were he in his usual state of mind, he probably would`ve given thought to just _why_ the door was still open, and why one of the display racks mounted on the wall between Brad`s desk and bed was empty.   
  
Had he known just _what gun_ it was that was missing, he probably would`ve winced. He wasn`t exactly 'in the know' about Brad Hunter`s worldly possessions, but given that it was the only weapon that Brad had ever been seen showing genuine _care_ to, it was obvious that it meant something.   
  
As it stood, the mercenary`s room was just a landmark. His own was positioned directly across from it after all, but he at least stopped long enough to manually trigger the door to shut.   
  
Another double swish of air later, and he was back in his own bedroom for the first time in what felt like an eternity. The smashed alarm clock was still in place on his nightstand, his own _blood_ had dried and congealed into a brown glue on the pices, and the mere sight of it made him clench the fist that had done the dirty work just a bit tighter.   
  
His duffle bag dropped from over his shoulder, and with an uneasy, reflexive series of movements that were the result of force of habit rather than actual thought, his vest was undone and cast to the floor, followed by his gloves. Each landed with muffled thumps before he kicked out of his sneakers, leaving his socks on as he tumbled face first onto bed.   
  
He lay there on his stomach, chilled bitterly by both reality and the cold air of the already darkened room, eyes open and staring at the wall to his left, but not actually seeing anything. And then, finally...   
  
"I wish I could just wake up and realize this was all a bad dream... Maybe tomorrow is the real Royal Cup and I`m just having a nightmare..."   
  
His voice was as hollow and dull as the silence behind his thoughts. He had no exact, polar opposite to sit there and annoy the piss out of him by playing devil`s advocate or anything else, just his own mind. It was like listening to static with the volume so low that you couldn`t actually _hear_ anything.   
  
Almost as if intent on making his flawed rationalization a reality, he reached beneath the two pillows of his bed and pulled the blanket and sheets down, crawling under them and laying down on his side before pulling them back into place. It wasn`t as comforting as he`d hoped, but there _was_ something at least distantly reassuring about feeling his own body heat starting to gather on the mattress and the covers. After setting himself up to what passed as being comfortable, he reached under his head and pulled the top pillow up, promptly using it to completely obscure himself from the neck up.   
  
Not long after that, Jamie Hameros settled into a fitful, heavy sleep. Maybe if he was lucky, he would wake up to find it all really _was_ just a bad dream...   
  
  
The Liger came to a stop, albeit a slower one than the usual skidding halts or dime-buster breaks. The damage done to it in the battle with the Hellwalker was still _highly_ apparent, from the countless cracks in the dusted-over armor to sparks that were infrequently jolting into view on the stabilizer caps. Almost instantly, unease set in as the realization hit home that despite the still-present ping on his scanner, there was nothing in sight.   
  
_ "Why the hell is it still pinging if there`s nothing around?"_ He wondered, ignorant of the possibility that _maybe_, just _maybe_ it was nothing but a malfunction. After all, the Blade Liger _had_ been punted right out of a city like a football, the shield was only _barely_ starting to come back online as a result of the Zoid`s own regenerative capabilities, not to mention old failsafe programming designed to reroute power from the less vital systems to more important ones.   
  
Annoying as it was, he stayed in place a little longer, glancing from side to side and then taking one last look down at his scanner.   
  
And in that moment, he realized he`d been set up, and that he had taken the bait. Hook, line and sinker.   
  
"_Damn_," he managed to yelp out, pulling the Liger into a backwards leap on instinct. The booster was still sluggish and wouldn`t respond fast enough, the legs were almost in the same shape. Too late, he realized that it wouldn`t be enough, and too late, he tried to brace himself as the attack came in from directly above him.   
  
The Ivory Liger roared out in shock and pain as a golden tinted claw smashed down across the front of the cockpit, just behind the top of what would`ve been its nose if it were a real animal. The impact alone caused chips of armor and random sparks to fly from the friction, and _shattered_ already broken glass right in front of Kyle. If not for the reflex of throwing his arms in front of his head and burying his face in the bends of his elbows, his pop star looks would`ve likely been shredded to pieces.   
  
His arms promptly gained a dozen or so new cuts, mute static lined the fresh hole in the cockpit glass and the world rattled violently. The Liger, already in the midst of being flung chin first towards the ground, promptly came to a punishing stop, a second claw, just as golden as the first, raking across its lower jaw in a hooking uppercut.   
  
Already as injured as it was, the Blade Liger had no choice but to falter and leave the ground on all but one foot, which seemed to defiantly root itself in place while the rest of the Zoid tilted almost straight into the and then twisted around, crashing to its side with the feline equivelent of a loud, pained groan. The remaining cockpit glass went stark gray for several seconds before Kyle finally allowed his arms to go down, just in time to actually _register_ the searing pain of a half dozen shallow cuts in his skin.   
  
"What the hell is this?" He managed to grumble out defeatedly, no longer feeling as if he had it in him to really be _surprised_ right now. Under normal conditions, he would`ve been a step or two above crapping himself in shock, but right now?   
  
Right now, Katherine could profess to be a lesbian, Mark could waltz by in pink, five-sizes-too-small tights, Abbie could take a job as a _male_ stripper and the Ivory Blade Liger could run off with the Shadow Fox for a three year vacation in Elemia, shooting up battery acid rectally, and Kyle would probably just shrug and look for some liquor.   
  
Suffice to say, he wasn`t in the _best_ state of mind.   
  
Slowly, the Liger started to stand up, and its pilot placed his hands back on the controls, seething with annoyance at what had just happened. If he even _had_ a breaking point, he wasn`t too far away from it now.   
  
Just as slowly as before, looking and sounding like an angry lion, the Ivory Blade Liger turned around, head held low and a growl issuing dangerously from its already damaged mouth. Sparks streaked from the numerous wounds to its body and legs, but Kyle was as oblivious to the damage as his Zoid was, ignoring even his own injuries for the time being.   
  
And then he saw what had attacked him.   
  
It stood just a few yards ahead of his own Zoid, body crouched forward at the ready, forelegs spread for balance, hind end arched up and tail stiffly curled into a half-arc behind it. It was black, almost the same color as freshly mined coal or thick obsidian, with light gray 'cuffs' above each foreclaw. A weapon resembling a three barrelled version of the Ivory Liger`s dual impact cannon sat on its collar, while thick looking 'whiskers' and 'ears' extended from sides of its jaw and the top flanks of its head. Its fangs were almost a solid silver in color, while the cockpit glass was an eerie shade of gray that almost matched the cuffs of its claws.   
  
It was a Liger. About as small as a Command Wolf, agile looking and fierce, but also packing a final addition to its arsenal - two silver-colored blades folded onto its back, each one visibly sharper than the pair wielded by its larger opponent. It wasn`t _just_ a Liger, it was a _Blade_ Liger, and it crouched down, poised to strike in a stark contrast to its noticably larger, Ivory counterpart.   
  
For a time, there was nothing but silence. The desert winds gently blew between the two Zoids, and Kyle exchanged in an unknown staring contest as his thoughts seemed to grind to a halt.   
  
It was so _convenient_, he almost wanted to puke on himself in disgust. The style matched _perfectly_ - the Zoid was smaller than his own and the colors were the exact opposite as well. It was visibly more geared towards melee than variety, as evidenced by the seeming lack of blasters on the back of each blade, as well as the proportionately larger shield generator panels on its head. Almost instantly, Kyle felt he knew the Zoid like the back of his hand, and almost instantly, he felt he knew just _who_ was piloting it.   
  
"Long time, no see," he muttered, eyes narrowing as the Ivory and Black Blade Ligers stared each other down, waiting for the first strikes.   
  
"Rayth Takahori."   
  
_

End Chapter Thirty-One  
  


* * *

  
  


_ **Author`s Note:** *Crossing his hooves that the HTML didn`t screw up.*  
  
That said, hopefully this chapter was worth the wait and hopefully it blew the lot of you out of the water several times over. Suffice to say, this is the kick-off, and ahead of time: If you`ve ever seen Rurouni Kenshin, the Rev Raptor was doing something like Soujiro`s Shukuchi. Yes, Reva is Leyla`s real name. Yes, that was the Death Saurer that Prozen used to level Guygalos(there were about a dozen or so of the downgraded DSaurers, one or two of the true variety seen at the end of the Guardian Force, and yes, there were other unbelievably large and powerful Zoids wandering around blowing shit up. The Zoidians didn`t call it the Endtimes for nothin` yanno...).  
  
Expect Rayth`s little return from the dead to be explained in the next chapter. His issues with Kyle were always something I`d **meant** to put more focus on but never quite had the chance to.  
  
Here`s hopin` I can keep the whole... 'Longer than fuck' trend up for the remaining five chapters, yes? :p  
  
**EndlessAdventure:** Well, I`m glad we settled things like gentlemen then, and I`m glad you don`t hold any grudges. Look forward to hearing from you sooner or later, and hopefully this chapter blew you so far out of the water that it makes up for any of the crap from the last few :P  
  
**Tilly:** It`s Liger Soccer! *Punts Van into low orbit.* :D Also glad it read better than I thought it would. God those were bitch chapters to write...  
  
**smilingsam:** Glad you`re enjoying it so far.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Glad you agree about Beck. As cool a character as he is, he`s also got 'Too Perfect' syndrome when it comes to battles. For a good guy, that`s usually not a good thing, yes? And yeah, expect my chapter rate to slow down a little bit more than they already have. The next chapter is already complete, but I`m waiting until I have the one after it, and since the next one(like this one...) weighs in at 91 kb on wordpad... Yeah. May be a while.  
  
**Illidan:** Yeah well... Hopefully it won`t be too predictable for much longer. I think it was you that I agreed with about raising the bar too high, sometimes you just gotta duck under it. As for characters... Don`t worry, I`ve got stuff planned for everyone, just need to get to where I can show it.  
  
With all **That** said, Sh33p out folks. R&R, enjoy and see ya next time! 


	32. Medley of the Damned

  
  
**Foreword:** Music choice for this one`s a bit of a bitch, buuuut...  
  
**Scene One:** Cowboy Bebop - Cosmic Dare  
**Scene Two:** (flashbacks in bold)  
**Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself**  
Rurouni Kenshin - Frozen Flare  
**KoRn - One(Metallica Cover)**  
**Metallica - Sanitarium**  
**Scene Three:** Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Angel  
**Scene Four:** Rammstein - Du Hast  
**Scene Five:** Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Angel  
**Scene Six:** Guano Apes - Open Your Eyes  
**Scene Seven:** .hack//Sign - A Stray Child  
**Scene Eight A:** .hack//Sign - Aura(Evil)  
**Scene Eight B:** Transiberian Orchestra - Carol of the Bells  
**Scene Nine:** Zoids - Any End of the Land(first part only)   
  
Musically intense enough for ya? :P  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Medley of the Damned   
  
  
  


In the midst of the desert, a lone Gustav chugged along, dragging two different trailers behind it. Originally, the vehicle had belonged to a woman by the name of Ciere Fuma, a fairly high ranking member of the former Backdraft Group. At present, Ciere Fuma was dead, what little had remained of her body had been cremated and the ashes were currently being spread by the currents of Zi`s oceans, which was exactly how she had always wanted her body to be disposed of. Not that she had ever counted on _dying_ at the relatively young age of twenty-five, but still.   
  
At the least though, some of her worldly possessions had been put to better use than lying around. It wasn`t like legals could really distribute them to her friends and family - the only friends she had listed in her will had been members of the Fuma Team, and all of them hadn`t exactly outlived her either. She also wasn`t known to have any close, _living_ relatives, which eliminated that as an option too.   
  
However, upon closer inspection into Fuma`s past, one could find two second-cousins and an uncle. One of those cousins went by the name of Pierce Lee Summers, though she typically dropped the middle third of her name.   
  
At present, the green haired aero-pilot was currently the only occupant of the drably colored Gustav. She hadn`t ever really been one for Fuma`s tastes in Zoid and color selection, but that hadn`t stopped her from 'borrowing' her deceased friend`s spare transport. Really, it wasn`t like Fuma was going to miraculously put herself back together and come back to life just to have a shitfit at Pierce for stealing something that would`ve otherwise been confiscated by the Guardian Force upon realization of the fact that the name she used to purchase it had been, more or less, just an alias for someone else.   
  
Assuming the world hadn`t come to an end.   
  
Really, post-apocalypse Zi was a pretty _boring_ place right now. At least it had been for the past days or so that it had been since she had seen Leon and company, back when they were recovering from having to take on a Geno Breaker, which had happened after _hours_ of repetitive, harshly fought combat with Zoids that were seemingly superior in numbers and weaponry.   
  
Her Storm Sworder _still_ needed something of an overhaul. It could fly now, yes, but it was hardly what Pierce would call worthy of combat. Even the paint needed touching up, and though two of the engines had been cleaned out and patched back together, she didn`t quite know how well they would hold in a real _fight_. As a result, her Zabat happened to be standing on the trailer behind it.   
  
Not that it was really _that_ much better, but it was at least a start. The Zabat was really little more than a carrier-model Pteras with Black Redler-level firepower, but it would do in a pinch if she had to get into a firefight.   
  
The cockpit wasn`t dead silent, at the least. In fact, it was anything _but_, thanks to the fact that Ciere`d been one hell of a music lover. She had gone through the trouble of completely replacing the Gustav`s original dashboard with a custom built computer designed exclusively to download, burn, store and play every song she could get her hands on, and much to Pierce`s benefit, Fuma`d had a _very_ varied taste, ranging from classical to death metal.   
  
Not to mention the pop song that Pierce was currently rocking back and forth and tapping one of her fingers to. It was annoyingly catchy, virtually mindless and completely devoted to a woman singing about a cosmic dare of some sort, mostly stuff that could make your average male listener lull his head to the side, get swirly eyed and drool on himself in a blind, mental haze of something resting somewhere between confusion, perhaps desire, and, most likely, general braindeath.   
  
In short, it was the kind of music that Pierce happened to love. It wasn`t critically acclaimed, it wasn`t angsty, and it wasn`t so much a love song as it was a song about a one night stand or something. On top of that, the tune was nice and easy on the ears.   
  
At the absolute _least_, it managed to keep her thoughts from droning back to the fact that she had nothing to do other than continue driving with the transport on cruise control. There was literally _nothing_ else to think about, she had no one to talk to and she`d yet to notice the pitch black smoke billowing up from where Farentown was located.   
  
_ "Knew I should`ve gone with Leon,"_ she finally concluded for the thirteenth or fourteenth time in the past hour or so. She`d been doing it a lot lately, but it never seemed to lead to any other thoughts other than that.   
  
Suffice to say, the Red Blade Liger pilot had impressed her, probably more than Bit Cloud had. Unlike the blonde pilot of the Liger Zero, Tauros had actually been _logical_ about being a slight weirdo, and on top of that, he hadn`t looked like a scrawny little Zoid battle fanboy. His hairstyle wasn`t exactly fashionable, but given that Leon had been following his own style with little or no care at all for being trendy, it still happened to be on the attractive side to her.   
  
_ "... Goody, I`m becoming a lovesick fangirl,"_ she finally muttered to herself in thought. Not that it was true, mind you, but it at least made for a nice change from thinking about how she should`ve gone with the rest of them instead of driving to Farentown on her own and-   
  
A ping sounded out and alerted her to the scanner, where her eyes quickly managed to register a pair of orange dots, one listed as a Gustav, the other as-   
  
"The Shadow Fox. Mark and Abbie must be heading for Romeo," she concluded falsely, aloud for once. At the same time, she finally stopped tapping and rocking this way and that, reaching over and stopping the song as well.   
  
  
** [**_The door finally slid open with one last gunshot into the lock. His left thumb was broken at the joint, and his left pinky was completely numb as well, both sides of his hand bleeding from where he`d literally ripped out of the handcuff. He didn`t know how long it had been since Kale had practically signed his death warrant, but at this point, all that really mattered anymore was escape.   
  
Crashing his Storm Sworder had been one thing. A fall from several thousand feet could be survived, if you played your cards right, but when Kale wanted you **dead**, there were only three ways out - suicide, fighting in desperation and running like Hell. Even with as hardened as he had become over the years, Rayth still knew his only chance was to run, and to run **quickly**.   
  
It was probably one of the only times in his entire life that the Third King had **ever** felt anything even remotely akin to fear, and the **only** time he had ever felt true terror.   
  
Muscling the door out of the way with his left arm, he erupted into the hallway that lead to the staircase out of the jail, moving in a half-baked spin so as to cover all angles as he did so. No one else was down there with him, and he didn`t know if he should`ve been relieved or comforted in that knowledge.   
  
"Have to get out of here," he thought to himself, dispelling every other aspect of reality and shutting out the sounds of battle still raging outside. With any luck, the army would manage to hold Kale off long enough for him to find a jeep and get the Hell away, but he wasn`t going to put faith in luck. Instead, he put his faith in his legs, bolting into a run for the staircase and climbing them rapidly, regardless of the pain still shooting through his left hand.   
  
The staircase lead into another hallway, this one usually lined with automated sentry guns that Kale himself had shut down earlier on, which in turn lead to a double sliding door at the end of the hall, already half-open and giving the visual of dozens of people frantically running around all over the front lobby.   
  
If not for the fact that he instinctively knew that they no longer cared about anything as small as a single spy, he would`ve started gunning people down, left and right. As it stood though, he kept running, plowing through the front doors and making it as far as the central outdoor area of the base.   
  
If he had been in a calmer state of mind, he probably would`ve smirked at the irony of how lucky he was that he had arrived just as a jeep had pulled up, one of the base`s commanding officers practically jumping out.   
  
Rayth shot him in the head by the time his feet finished hitting the ground. His body slumped backwards against the side of the vehicle, and blood sprayed into the air for a few seconds, but by the time it had stopped, the Third King had jumped into the driver`s seat and crammed his foot into the pedal with a desperate glint of hope.   
  
And then, as he turned the jeep to leave, he looked up in time to take in the details of his own end, in almost perfect slow motion.   
  
Slagging plates of high-grade steel flew through the air like frisbees, all of them torn from the outer walls by windsheer alone, carried through the air for over half a mile and finally being thrown down towards the ground.   
  
His ears only vaguely registed the sound of two of those metal walls stabbing in around him, one crashing through the back of the hummer, the other stabbing through the back seat. Without a seatbelt, he went flying forward, head slamming into the glass with a sickening crack, chest ramming into the steering wheel as the downsized, military-version airbag blew out, whiplashing him back into place, just in time to feel the atmosphere tear away from above.   
  
His eyes opened, and the world went white._**]**   
  
Black streaked, Ivory reacted sluggishly but with power and the two Ligers clashed viciously with each other, fangs locked together, claws wrestling against each other. Weakened from battle with a Demon, the Ivory Liger faltered first, its smaller, swifter opponent forcing it back onto its hind legs with a shove, but Kyle was better than even he gave _himself_ credit for, grunting against sudden loss of balance and working the controls like a skilled pianist.   
  
On the verge of falling over backwards, the Ivory Liger tightened its grip on the teeth of the Black Liger, what remained of the power in its neck and legs both coming into play as the larger Zoid literally heaved the smaller one into the air and twisted dizzily while doing it. The end result was the smaller Liger slamming into the ground on its gut, breaking away while the larger Liger tried to get to its feet.   
  
"Figures you wouldn`t have the _decency_ to just _die_ when Hameros shot you down," Mazemia finally growled out, his arms still stinging from shattered glass.   
  
** [**_It was all over but the dying. Every nerve he had left was shot right to Hell and back again with pain so intense that it rendered him almost completely numb, but not numb enough to prevent him from realizing how badly he had been wounded.   
  
It was like some great big universal joke. Death just didn`t seem to want Rayth Takahori`s life to end, and it threw him back every time. Broken bones, bloody wounds, he`d survived it all, but it seemed he wouldn`t survive this time. Even with how cruel Death seemed to be to him, not even its twisted whims could save him now.   
  
His skin had been charred black almost all over, taking on a scaled appearance with what was actually left of it to begin with. His hair was gone, completely burned off except for one or two strands of ash sticking out from what remained of his scalp. He lay on his back, half-buried under the molten, burning remains of the jeep he had so desperately sought to escape in, and metal had somehow fused into parts of what remained of his body, with jagged bits sticking out here and there. Despite the grievous nature of his injuries though, they weren`t bleeding.   
  
Because they had all been **burnt shut**.   
  
His left arm was completely gone. His right was mostly intact, with the minor problem that it had been severed and was somehow burnt into the side of the overturned lump of burning steel that had once been a military issue jeep, the gun having been burnt beyond recognition until it was literally part of his hand. His legs weren`t exactly in much better condition, they`d been so broken that one had been wrenched off and the other was only attached by a few random, disgusting strips of burnt muscle and skin.   
  
As if that wasn`t enough though, he had been deprived of the rest of his senses as well. His eyes saw only fading colors like one could see if they shut their eyes after staring at the sun, and his ears had been completely burned off, though even if they hadn`t, it wouldn`t much matter. The sudden pressure shockwave of the incoming beam had caused his ear drums to explode, and left him only barely able to breathe.   
  
Suffice to say, Rayth Takahori was **not** in good shape._**]**   
  
"How`d you survive it, Rayth?" Kyle asked in a low, cold voice. Most people wouldn`t`ve been able to pin the tone to him in a thousand years if they`d never heard it before, but it was a tone that he had often used when dealing with his former comrade.   
  
Red eyes narrowed, the Liger growled responsively and the other Zoid waited with an uncanny, methodical sense of patience to it. It had never been Rayth`s style to let an opponent get up without a challenge, he had been downright ruthless in all of their battles, never asking for a quarter and never giving any either. Of the things that hadn`t seemed to change though, his merciless silence seemed to be one of them.   
  
"Answer me," Kyle ordered with the same voice as before. Still no response.   
  
** [**_His voice was gone. Even with it, his throat would have probably been too parched and damaged to speak anyway. Even with his hope faded though, unable to see or hear anything, unable to even **smell** anything because the heat of the blast had completely burnt his tongue. His teeth had been flash-fried until they were black, and his gums were only barely lubricated from the miniscule amount of blood that hadn`t been evaporated out of his mouth, but even then, he refused to stop.   
  
"Help..."   
  
It was a desperate, lost cause of a plea for salvation. In all likelihood, had he heard it, he would`ve only been able to identify a dry, scratchy hiss that sounded like a word but couldn`t be identified beyond that. Again, he called out, though his voice was completely gone, and though it would have been beyond any normal pain to do so if he weren`t virtually numbed from his agony as it was.   
  
"Help... Me... Please..."   
  
Still no answer.   
  
"I... Don`t... Want... To die..."   
  
It was as if the fires burning on top of his death pile were **laughing** at him, because he could still hear no confirmation. He couldn`t register any touch, any vibration, and he couldn`t even see any vague silhouettes.   
  
"I`ve... Got... Too much... To live... For..."   
  
It felt like an eternity as he sought to hold his grip on the breath he had taken just to wheeze the last words out, an eternity trapped between Tick and Tock, Life and Death. An eternity of clinging to the edge of the abyss and knowing that one sign of weakness **or** strength would damn him to oblivion. The metaphorical ledge he hung onto was trembling and shuddering, and the pitch black darkness below was calling to him with increasing fervor, but...   
  
Fear alone kept him from letting out that dying breath. Terror of the unknown, of what he could not, would not and feared to understand. In his mind`s eye, even as that ledge became so hot that his nonexistent flesh began to burn, but the abyss offerred the chill of death in relief.   
  
Finally though, the temptation of release became too much to bear. Hope left him, and as it did, he let go of that ledge, the border between Life and Death. He surrendered himself to it, knowing that it would bring sweet, lasting relief in the form of eternal oblivion, and as it all happened, the last breath blew from his pierced lungs, exhaling into the air in a thin, black puff of smoke.   
  
And then, it happened._**]**   
  
"**_ANSWER ME!!!_**"   
  
The Ivory Liger roared, blades unfolding until they stood straight up, and then lowering down to either side.   
  
** [**_"Not. Yet."_**]**   
  
The Black Liger screamed with the voice of a human and a foul beast at once, its own blades springing up and then down to either side, its posture mirroring that of its larger foe.   
  
** [**_It seemed like an eternity drifted by, but at the same time, it felt the same as it might when one was staring at a clock and watching a single second tick away.   
  
When it was over, he didn`t know **what** had happened. Not exactly, but he knew that he could feel again - more so than before. He knew that his sense of touch had heightened in some ways, decreased in others, and his sight...   
  
It was as if he could pick out a single missed splotch of paint on the Whale King that seemed to be hovering overhead. He could **hear** the color, **see** each and every sound, **taste** every single electron that still tweaked through the air in the aftermath of the Geno Maxis` assault.   
  
But thought of the Maxis brought thoughts of its pilot. Rayth didn`t need to be a genius to figure out that it was an attack from Kale that had effectively ended life as he had known it. To an extent, he felt somewhat bitter over it - but only to an extent. As strange as it sounded, he almost felt like thanking the other King for putting him out of his misery. Almost.   
  
For a short while, he stood there, thinking with a mind that now felt as though it was starting to lose every trace of humanity, to become another part of some great machine. Images flooded his mind, from a visual of a young woman with vivid blue eyes and hair that was even darker than his own, to a howling red beast that looked like some terror inspiring cross between a modern-day Geno Saurer and the Death Saurers that had spawned them.   
  
More images came, he had to fight to keep from losing his sense of who he was.   
  
The only one that seemed to stand out was of the woman. While her eyes were blue, and her hair was virtually pitch black, she sparked a memory of his own that was threatening to be consumed under the rush of new information. Whether it was the fact that her skin was as pale as your average slice of bread, or that her hair was done up in a high-kept, tight ponytail, she sparked a memory that in turn lit off a series of others, and even as his mind and another began to merge, those memories alone forced him to remain in control of himself, even as they started to fade away.   
  
How long it took for his mind to merge with that of the Black Blade Liger, he didn`t know. He didn`t know, either, that his body had been fused into the cockpit, and he didn`t know that Organoid-like wires were now plugged into every single hole in his original form. He didn`t know the parallel involved, the connection that now linked him to everyone who had ever piloted a Demon, didn`t know that he had just joined a club so exclusive that most people wouldn`t have even wanted it to exist.   
  
All he knew, after a time, was that he was now in control. There was a secondary presence, yes, a dual nature to every thought, but **he** was in control.   
  
More memories ticked by. The only ones that stood out were of the original pilot of the Black Blade coaxing a dark colored, blue eyed Organoid into a pod as the world virtually fell apart around them, and of the woman`s eventual demise centuries later as a Helic Republican research crew accidentally cut all power to the pod that she had climbed into, awakening her with a shock only to die within a minute from a mixture of causes. Other than that though...   
  
A similar looking woman crossed his mind, dragging thoughts of a silver haired man and an old betrayal that itched at what was left of his human heart.   
  
"Mazemia," he - or it? - thought with a metallic coldness, bringing his new body to point in the direction that he **felt** they were in. There was an old score to settle now, and even if it didn`t matter anymore, it was probably all that he had left. His only 'friend' had been more than clear enough in proving that he was no longer welcomed, his former employers hadn`t bothered coming after him after his Storm Sworder had been shot down, but there were still the old feelings of betrayal.   
  
Maybe when he finished settling those, he could lie down and go back to sleep..._**]**   
  
Each roar wound down to a dull growling, which in turn gave way to a pair of rough sounding grunts as both the Ivory and Black Ligers launched towards each other.   
  
  
"**_WHAT?!_**"   
  
Pause.   
  
"_You`re shitting me_! How the hell does someone like _Harabec_ get _killed_ in a fucking _Zoid battle_?!"   
  
Katherine sighed, standing not too far away with her arms crossed just beneath her chest, wearing the grim expression of someone who had _wanted_ to be the bearer of bad news for the sake of others, but hadn`t been given the chance. Abbie was still in the back seat of the Gustav, though her crying hadn`t picked up at all in the past minutes. Mark had pretty much demanded to be the one to give Pierce the news, and she was apparently taking it almost worse than Abbie had.   
  
"I`m not joking. He died with the rest of the city."   
  
Now _there_ was an unnerving tone of voice for someone as whacked out as Mark was. Usually, it was difficult to get the guy to stop making wisecracks about everything he saw, but now? Now it was like humor was a mostly foriegn concept to him.   
  
"... Mark... If this is some _fucking prank_..."   
  
To be brutally honest, Katherine really didn`t see the big deal. Sure, a family member had died, and sure an entire city had just been blown to shit, but it was as if the three of them were mourning more for the one than the million, not to mention the fact that at least two of them had probably lost just about every worldly possession they still owned. It was like they had always viewed Harabec as some sort of invulnerable shield or something, as if they could _always_ count on him.   
  
And _why_ did the three of them view Mark`s _uncle_ so closely?   
  
It was really just too confusing for her, Kat hadn`t exactly been raised in the most nuclear of families. Sure, she had a brother, and sure, her parents had actually been around for her, but not very emotionally. Kyle was probably the only person she was ever really _emotional_ around, even if she had formed various attachments to other people over the years. It was just her nature.   
  
"If it was a prank, I must`ve used a shitload o` M-80s," Mark finally replied with something similar to his usual way of speaking, raising one fist up with a thumb indicating the general direction of Farentown. Kat could _tell_ that it was probably the first time Pierce had actually bothered paying attention to the _minor_ detail of the pitch black smoke rising in the distance.   
  
The green haired woman`s jaw sagged noticably, and her mouth looked as if it was threatening to hang open. Her eyes widened noticably and her shoulders slumped.   
  
"Yeah. Pretty much."   
  
_ "And I thought I sucked at comforting people,"_ Kat thought sardonically at the sight ahead of her, turning away and uncrossing her arms. It was boring, really, standing around at a virtual funeral and waiting for Kyle to come back from wherever he had gone off to. In all honesty, she felt he was taking _way_ too long for _just_ going to scope out an odd ping off the scanners.   
  
_ "May as well check on Abbie,"_ she reasoned, having already looked in on and reassured their human cargo a dozen or more times in the past few minutes. The cockpit still hung open, the boy was still sitting in his original seat with his hands neatly set on his knees, and Abbie was still sitting in the passenger seat, no longer crying, but not exactly looking cheerful and ready to take on the world either.   
  
"How`re you holding up?" She asked, half-climbing to lean over the edge on the driver`s side. The only answer was a shrug, Abbie simply propped her head up on one hand and stared off into space with a glum expression.   
  
Kat sighed and shook her head, not saying another word since it really wasn`t her place to intrude anymore than she probably already had. Instead, she took a single glance down to the scanner and started to climb back down to the ground, only to stop when she registered the words 'shots fired' on the screen.   
  
"_Mark_!"   
  
  
Three hard explosions rang out, the Ivory Blade Liger rocked to the side and almost fell over, only barely holding its balance with an agitated growl. Smoke lit up from the three already burnt, cracked points in its armor, each of which now held an appearance similar to shattered glass that could crumble away at almost any second. It was a miracle that the attacks hadn`t blown one of the blades off.   
  
"Fucking shrimp`s even faster now than he used to be," Kyle noted with palpable annoyance, his eyes shifting over to where the Black Blade stood at the ready, almost taunting him to even _try_ and keep up. The smaller Zoid may have been lacking in ranged weapons and armor in comparison to the larger, but it was by _far_ faster and more agile, able to pull the kinds of manuevers that would make a Lightning Saix pilot choke to death on his own vomit.   
  
"You still haven`t learned to stop underestimating me," he muttered, pulling the trigger on one joystick. Accordingly, the repeating blaster on the blade of that side let loose with three shots, though the Black Blade dodged each one with an ease that sent a sharp chill down Mazemia`s spine.   
  
"... Crap."   
  
** [**_"Is that it?"_**]**   
  
Again, the Black Liger seemed to howl with a mocking tone, charging forward at speeds that defied the imagination. By the time that Kyle had even realized it, the smaller Zoid had rammed into the Ivory Liger`s right shoulder, rocking it again only to crouch down and repeat the manuever, practically dancing under the other Zoid`s right blade before headbutting it right in the stomach. It was a calculated, swift move, the kind that took both a lot of skill and control to master, and the kind that Rayth had always excelled at.   
  
** [**_"If I didn`t know any better, I`d almost think you **want** to lose."_**]**   
  
The larger Zoid landed on its feet with a stagger, now sparking from a dent across its gut. Kyle grimaced to himself for the umpteenth time of the night, sparing a single glare to the smaller Liger before turning to face it.   
  
"Proven your point yet?" He asked, having yet to actually _hear_ any sort of reply from the other, only to find every action he made being countered or paid back three fold. It was like fighting with an opponent who knew every single move you were going to make two steps ahead in advance, but who was also fast enough to stand there and _laugh_ while waiting for you to try and make them.   
  
The Black Blade growled dismissively, blades folding up once again before tilting straight forward, almost as if they were lances rather than swords. The Zoid didn`t have blasters like the Ivory Liger, but that didn`t seem to matter in the slightest considering how the battle had been going so far.   
  
** [**_"I don`t even **need** my blades to beat your sorry-ass little Griffin!"_**]**   
  
Kyle let off a snort, watching how Rayth just stood there. Mocking him all over again.   
  
"Is that all you can do? Taunt me till I get too pissy to think straight?" He asked once more, no longer expecting answers since he probably already knew them anyway. The Ivory Liger nodded its head in accord with its pilot, each blade promptly folding up and back out of use as the larger Zoid regarded its smaller opponent.   
  
"It isn`t working, Rayth. Not this time."   
  
** [**_"We`re leaving, Ray. Take care and get out soon, will you?"   
  
"**WHAT?!**"_**]**   
  
"I`m through playing. I`ve got bigger things to worry about than some spoiled brat who-"   
  
** [**_"**SHUT! UP!!!**"_**]**   
  
The silver haired pilot was promptly silenced by an angered cry from the Black Blade, which exploded into a cloud of violent dust and dirt less than a second later. By the time Kyle had realized what had just happened, it was almost too late.   
  
_ Almost_.   
  
"The same trick doesn`t work twice anymore!" He shouted, yanking the Ivory Liger to the side and narrowly avoiding having the entire forward half of the body crushed in a corkscrew dive similar to the trick created by Van Fleiheit. "_Especially_ not with one of my own signature moves!"   
  
Both Ligers collided, the Black Blade recovering onto all four feet as the Ivory Blade whipped into a standing corkscrew jump one golden paw slicing up through the air and cracking across the smaller Zoid`s chin with a hail of sparks and chipped bits of armor. Rayth howled in more discomfort than actual pain, going into a backwards flip as Kyle recovered from the attack, landing on all fours almost flawlessly, even in his Zoid`s brutalized state.   
  
Three more shots rang out, the Ivory Blade Liger roared in pain and flew from its feet almost as soon as it had landed on them, crashing onto one side as the armor on its left shattered like glass, blowing away to reveal the same layer of black metal that covered its legs. All it would take was one more salvo and its insides would`ve been exposed, but Kyle, quite frankly, didn`t care anymore.   
  
** [**_"Get up. I haven`t even broken a sweat yet..."   
  
"Then why`s your lip bleeding, tough guy?"_**]**   
  
"Just a flesh wound, pal, you can take it," he said, more to the Liger than anything else. Almost as a result of his words, the battered, nearly maimed Zoid stood up again, still broadside to the Black Blade. Rayth stood there with a malicious posture, blades still tipped forward even while he waited, still trying to taunt his foe into action.   
  
Silence reigned as the two Zoids began to circle each other, heads held low. Whoever blinked first, they both knew, would likely be brought to the edge of death. It was a stand-off, no questions asked and no quarter given from either side. Each one knew the risks they would take in an attack, just as each one knew the danger of trying to wait the other out. Rayth had been in control throughout the fight, but that only meant that he could afford the smallest margin of error.   
  
Kyle had been through combat for hours on end by now. First, with one of the last waves of AI-controlled Zoids. Then, with the Hellwalker, and now with Rayth himself. Before that, he had been put through the wringer of days of fighting with little rest in between. His Zoid and his body were both well beyond the limits of their endurance, even the slightest mistake would probably kill him.   
  
Unfortunately though...   
  
** [**_"You never could out-wait me."_**]**   
  
It was Kyle who blinked first.   
  
All it took for Rayth to begin his attack was a single extra spark to flitter out of the Ivory Liger`s right wrist stabilizer, glittering through the air. By the time it had faded, the Black Blade`s panels had flipped up, just as a solid yellow dome of energy blazed to life in front of it. Its back booster sprang to life at the same time, burning to life with a howl of white-and-blue, and by the time that Kyle could finish pulling his own Liger into reacting, it was already too late.   
  
The Ivory Blade Liger went flying into the air, its own shield burning up and then cutting out as the primary emitters jolted and snapped from the sheer impact to it. It was a wonder that the generator didn`t give out as well, but even if Kyle was too slow to react from there, the Liger itself wasn`t it.   
  
Speedily and dizzily at once, its back booster flipped back up in sheer defiance of its own damage, rotating towards the ground and sputtering to life after several stalls.   
  
The larger Zoid touched down, the smaller one`s shield and booster both dropped and three more shots rang the air, and with them, three more explosions. Black-tinted under-armoring shattered and melted like glass, several systems based in the Ivory Liger`s right side died down, but the Zoid still stood, staggering under the brunt of the impacts but not hitting the ground. Not yet.   
  
"_Grand_," Kyle spat, watching the entire left half of what remained of the cockpit glass start to dim and fuzz a bit. Still though, the Liger growled its contempt and held its head high, slowly but surely turning to face the smaller Zoid.   
  
"If I`m gonna go down, Rayth," he began, pulling the joysticks into the proper pattern to deploy each blade. Only the left even functioned enough to do more than point straight up.   
  
"I`ll at least _try_ to take you with me."   
  
Still no response other than a mocking rumble from the Black Blade, which responded in kind. Each blade sprang up from its lancing position atop the Zoid`s shoulder, unfolding to its sides with a slow, methodical precision. It was almost as if Rayth was smiling at him.   
  
_ Almost_.   
  
"Endgame, pal..."   
  
Three more shots rang out, the cockpit glass completely shattered and the larger Liger howled in pain, its pilot screaming his indignance as the intensity, drama and dignity of the moment went up in smoke, a round ripping into either side of the Ivory Liger`s battered face, the third passing just over the cockpit and exploding directly behind it.   
  
The blasts themselves somehow failed to touch Kyle, but the glass easily shredded across his arms, cutting deep as he threw them up to try and shield his now bowed head, his thighs also joining in the fun of being cut to ribbons by debris. More systems failed, the main console went out and lighting all through the newly opened cockpit went with it, even as the Black Blade began to creep forward.   
  
It was obvious now, that Rayth had never intended to give Kyle the pleasure of going down fighting. Each blade tipped forward, the sabered mouth fell open and the smaller Zoid slowly crept towards its blinded, temporarily disabled foe, intent on skewering the pilot like a shishkabob, or just cutting him - and the head - right in half.   
  
It didn`t turn out that way.   
  
"As much as I hate _interrupting_ things..."   
  
Explosions suddenly _ripped_ across the back and side of the smaller Blade Liger, caused by pulse lasers and heavy duty, explosive slugs, almost throwing the small Zoid right off its feet if not for the angles of attack and Rayth`s own, impossible level of balance.   
  
"I hate being _left out_ even more," Marcus Harlock exclaimed over the broadband, though it wasn`t very likely that Kyle or anyone else even heard him. Seconds ticked by as the Shadow Fox stepped into view, standing tall upon a nearby hill with both guns smoking, both claws glowing and all teeth beared out in what looked like a snarl, even upon its expressionless face.   
  
The Black Blade Liger growled annoyedly, smoking now _pouring_ out of pits and holes across its body, which was somehow beyond being outright gutted by the assault. Even as its larger, original target finally fell over, its newest foe remained in place, gattling gun trained on the Black Blade`s cockpit, both optics glimmering a dangerous orange.   
  
"_Let`s dance_!"   
  
  
_ "Finished,"_ she thought to herself with no small share of satisfaction as she finished typing up the log. It was something of a nicety to Harry, for when and if he ever actually bothered wanting his 'job' back, and to be honest, she _really_ hoped he did. Sarah Obscura had once been the kind of woman who had her eyes set to goals that most people would`ve found absurd. From shattering the illegal equivelent of a glass ceiling when she had ascended to equal rank with Altiel to trying to make her sons the best pilots in the entire Backdraft Group, she had once been the type who would almost _always_ set her goals too high and raised her expectations along with them.   
  
Having one son go murderously insane while the other slowly seemed to disown her in favor of a _Zoid_, being imprisoned for her role in trying to crash what amounted to a governmental tool for keeping the world`s population in check for her own ambitions and then living through the _apocalypse_ had done _more_ than enough to mellow her out over the past few months.   
  
Suffice to say, she no longer set her goals quite as high as she used to, her expectations had lowered accordingly and her personality had improved drastically because of it. Now, rather than seeing virtually everyone but her children as pawns waiting to be played, she saw those closest to her as actual _friends_. She didn`t see her sons as goals and tools to achieve them anymore, she saw them as her _children_, even if neither seemed to want very much to do with her anymore.   
  
Most importantly though, Sarah had lost her taste for power. Sure, it had perks, but look at what it had cost her - her marriage, her children, her dignity, months in prison and, arguably, not a single thing gained from all of it. Now, she would`ve likely been content to just earn a nice, small fortune and retreat to some little village in the middle of nowhere and live out her days in peace. She didn`t _want_ to have to handle Champton, she was only doing it because she was the only one left who was actually qualified for it.   
  
_ "And,"_ she paused, first exiting and then shutting the computer down with a tired sigh. _"Because it`s the least I can do,"_ she reminded herself for the umpteenth time in the past day or two, in regards to her reasoning. It was true that she really wasn`t ever that good a pilot, the only time that she had ever taken control of a Zoid had been flying Sinkers around as a hobby when her husband had still be alive, but she was a business woman, not to mention a student of history and cunning strategist to boot. Combine those things together and one had effectively found _the_ perfect person to fill in for Harry Champ, or even completely take over from him in general.   
  
Sliding the chair back with a yawn, the middle aged, widowed mother of two stretched her arms and legs out for the first time in hours, allowing her eyes to rest instead of trying to focus on lettering or some small detail in a chart, image or video, and allowing herself the smallest chance to actually chuckle for once.   
  
"I`m going to need glasses if I keep this up," she mumbled out, already feeling sympathetic to the Champ Corporation`s chief heir. How he had done it straight for a month or two, _right_ after his family had effectively gone to Hell, with little, if _any_ help and virtually no experience was completely beyond her, it ranked as a minor miracle that his eyes hadn`t rotted out and fallen from the sockets by now.   
  
After a few more moments though, she finally began to pull herself from the too-comfortable chair, dark blue hair resting a bit heavier than usual as she reached up to unzip the flight jacket that she was _still_ wearing, and had been ever since they`d left Romeo.   
  
"Need a shower," she said to herself, taking a passing glance up to where the hole had been in the roof. That was something that had impressed her about the locals, they`d rushed repairs to all of the recent damage caused by that lunatic Gojulas and the arrival of Tsun and her Organoid, completing them in under twelve hours each, even _improving_ the structure as they did so...   
  
Before she could continue her musings though, there was a sudden creak from the door knob, grabbing her attentions and pulling them back to the softly lit room that currently served as her limited slice of reality. Whoever had done it was obviously hesitating though, be it out of indecisiveness or distraction was unknown.   
  
"Come in," she ordered bluntly, giving all of a split second`s consideration to zipping her jacket back up for a more formal look, but deciding against it in favor of sticking her hands in the lower pockets and going with whatever flow presented itself. Sarah was typically mindful of appearances, but right now, it didn`t really matter.   
  
The knob creaked again, finishing its turn before the heavy old door slipped open, giving way to the visual of a young woman who looked to be in her late teens or so, dressed a bit too orderly, for Sarah`s tastes, in a pink dress with a light yellow jacket worn over it, with her long, sandy blonde hair let down for the time being.   
  
She also had the same greenish-blue eyes and fair complexion that Sarah had come to to associate with the young man that was likely the newcomer`s brother. Her demeanor didn`t quite fit right, and her posture was a bit on the sloppy side compared to what the older woman had expected of a Champ, but she still had enough of the same facial features as Harry to mark her as one of his siblings, if nothing else.   
B "Hello," she greeted with what was most _obviously_ a forcefully cheerful tone, adding to it with an unnervingly false smile.   
  
"Marry Champ, I presume?" Sarah asked, ignoring the formalities. It was a moot point since there really wasn`t any reason to be formal at all these days.   
  
"Yes," the younger newcomer replied, still wearing that completely fake smile as if it were a crumbling shield. "Who are you? If you don`t mind my asking that is..."   
  
"Sarah Obscura. I... Commandeered things at the recommendation of your brother`s girlfriend. He needed the rest," she shrugged back, already having prepared herself for any insults. The wealthy hadn`t ever really been particularly friendly to her, after all, not unless she could prove that they`d have something to gain by helping her or letting her help them for her own aims, and even then they had a tendency to annoy her to no end.   
  
Either way, Marry seemed all too willing to back down and let the topic rest without challenging her over her control. That was a good thing, Sarah didn`t know if she could survive anymore desk jockey politics after the last time she had played the game.   
  
"I`m looking for him... I couldn`t find him in any of his usual hang-outs, but do you know where he is?" The blonde asked pleasantly, _still_ smiling so brightly that it almost came within a few steps of triggering Sarah`s maternal instincts out of sheer sympathy, something that likely wouldn`t have been there had she not done some growing up of her own in the past months.   
  
"You could try his _bedroom_," Sarah offered with a raised brow. Almost instantly, she`d jumped to the conclusion that either Marry was completely off her rocker in a mixture of denial and god knows what else, or Harry didn`t exactly favor sleeping in his own room. "He went there earlier this afternoon, still resting, I`d bet."   
  
"Did something happen?" Marry asked curiously, head tilting to the side in an embelished show of curiosity. She hadn`t even _asked_ who Harry`s new girlfriend was. Not yet, anyway.   
  
"... You`d probably be better off asking him yourself," Sarah sighed, both brows lowering into an outright sardonic expression. She didn`t feel like playing games right now.   
  
"... Oh. Alright. Thank you, Miss-" "Just call me Sarah," the older woman clarified.   
  
"Right. Is there anything you`d like me to tell him?" Marry asked, still smiling so falsely that it finally threatened to drive Obscura right over the edge.   
  
"No. But I do have something I`d like to tell you," she finally said, dropping the formalities even more while walking towards the door, making it a _point_ to pass the younger woman by as closely as possible, even if Marry seemed to shrink back instantly as a result.   
  
"That smile would look a lot better if it were actually sincere," Sarah began, reaching the door and grabbing the knob. "Don`t give up, and hold your head high. There`s always hope," she said, pulling the door opened and giving a half-wave with her free hand before vanishing into the hallway. Whether or not she believed those words, even she didn`t know.   
  
Marry Champ, on the other hand, stayed behind, standing there and staring at the window situated just a few feet behind the desk. The twin moons were glowing in the distance, the city looked more alive to her now than it had in the month or so it had been since her parents had died and for the first time in over a week, an almost alien expression crept onto her face without her knowing it.   
  
It was a smile. A real smile.   
  
  
Explosions ripped through the once peaceful desert, shattering the evening`s already broken serenity even more than it had been beforehand.   
  
"**_STRIKE LASER CLAW!!!_**"   
  
Gold streaked this way and that, the Shadow Fox went flying through the air, head pointed awkwardly at the ground before it righted itself independently of its pilot, just as the Black Blade Liger crashed to the ground on all four feet, skidding and twisting this way and that while energy pooled up where the claw had struck its left blade.   
  
More shots rang out, the Fox`s dual impact cannon rattled from firing, but both shots were blown out of the air almost as soon as they`d been fired, with a third slug passing through the smoke and smacking the Zoid across one cheek. The paint blurred and armor warped slightly, but the Shadow let out a defiant shriek, almost echoed with its pilots actions. Smoke would`ve obscured the target for almost any other non-canine Zoid, but it was almost like looking through clear glass for the Shadow Fox.   
  
The barrel whirled and six pulse lasers screamed to life, tearing through the cloud between the two Zoids at the speed of light, but still missing their target all the same. Rayth had dodged by precious seconds, escaping the attack before it had even been made by jumping up, his booster springing into action once again while the Black Blade`s shield blurred into existence with a dull hum.   
  
Like a mortar round, the smaller Zoid continued up into the air for all of a split second before coming right back down, but the Shadow Fox wasn`t waiting for it.   
  
It was easily true that Marcus Harlock was seriously _lacking_ in experience. Most of his victories came either with the help of someone else or from dumb luck, but what he didn`t have in terms of experience, he made up for with determination, ingenuity and raw talent.   
  
And unlike Kyle Mazemia, he was being fueled by a potent mixture of grief, a fifth or sixth wind caused by his own exhaustion and a very _blatant_ lack of self-preservation, among other things. His Zoid was also in better shape than a mortally wounded animal that was gagging on its own blood. As Rayth Takahori, or what was left of him, was finding out, this was _not_ an opponent to take lightly.   
  
The Blade Liger touched down neatly on both forelegs, booster swiveling around and both hind legs kicking in tune with it, leaving the small Zoid to point directly at the seemingly retreating Shadow Fox, even as the larger Zoid`s tail split open and a single missile launched from inside.   
  
The missile closed to halfway between the two, the Liger roared, the Fox growled, Mark bit into his tongue and the projectile suddenly blew open to reveal a wide electromagnetic net from within, one that promptly draped itself over Rayth`s shield and vaporized, but not before sending a stunning pulse into the Liger`s shield generator, one that promptly knocked it offline for the time being.   
  
The Shadow Fox turned, orange eyes glimmering with something resembling triumph as the smaller Blade Liger growled out in annoyance.   
  
"Give up yet, midget?" Mark finally asked, not even expecting an answer. The Blade Liger`s swords soon began to glow once again, a faint snarl echoing in the quiet of the desert - it wasn`t the same as a witty comeback, but it was all the answer he needed. The Black Liger attacked once again, blazing into a run with blades fully extended to either side, an attack which the Fox replied to by firing off from its laser vulcan gun.   
  
Explosions rocked through the desert, the Blade Liger avoided every attack and continued to close, but the Shadow Fox hopped back on its own at the last second, practically throwing itself right into the smaller Zoid`s path, which was exactly when Mark pulled the other trigger, causing the dual impact cannon to fire into the smaller Zoid`s chin at point blank.   
  
The collision still forced both Zoids from the ground, even through the sudden impact from the explosions at the Blade Liger`s jaw. Claws flew like fists in a bar room brawl as the two rolled along, only to be broken apart by their own momentum after a few more seconds, the smaller Blade Liger going flying while the larger Shadow Fox skidded along on its side and then up to its feet from its own movement.   
  
The Black Blade touched down flawlessly, smoking from the lower jaw, teeth cracked at several places and its armor stained with dirt and dust. The Shadow Fox was still in slightly batter shape, both claws suddenly starting to light up as Mark watched and waited for the next attack.   
  
Three shots rang out, the Shadow Fox rocked off to the side and the Black Blade Liger charged forward again, roaring out a war cry. While the pilot was still reeling from the sudden surprise attack that he felt like an _idiot_ for not expecting, the Zoid itself was swinging into action - literally. The laser vulcan gun swung about to point at the incoming Liger, spinning rapidly and firing off a burst of pulse lasers. The Liger barely dodged the first six shots by hopping over to the side and continuing its run, but a seventh cracked harshly across one of its upper right panels, snapping it off and further ending chances of the shield`s revival.   
  
The two Zoids again closed to point blank, the Shadow Fox rolled over onto its side and lashed out in a last ditch effort to behead the Black Liger, only to have another claw swipe its entire foreleg out of the way at the last second. The two crashed into each other again and rolled along for several seconds, breaking apart once again with the Shadow Fox flying through the air, several gashes across its stomach, three shattered craters on one side and one foreleg dented along the backside.   
  
The Blade Liger sprang up again, both blades still burning brightly as its booster howled to life once more. In a blast of dust and smoke, the Zoid was gone once again, and by the time that Mark had finished recovering enough to do more than bring the Shadow Fox up to its feet -   
  
"**_FUCK!!!_**"   
  
- the Blade Liger had made its attack.   
  
The larger Zoid slumped after the blade finished passing through the side of its neck, piercing armor in a lightning quick thrust, then severing a few of the nonvital links to the body, temporarily overloading the rest with the energy from the blades and then burning the wound on the way out.   
  
The lights dimmed in the cockpit, and across the monitor, three words that Harlock had _never_ wanted to see or hear appeared.   
  
"Command System Freeze..."   
  
Rayth`s blades slowly powered back down, folding straight up and back, out of use as the Black Liger started to circle around its newer prey, almost amused.   
  
"Come on, you`re not dead yet, Fox," Mark started to mumble, as if he could somehow _force_ the Zoid back to its feet. It was a futile exercise, when a Zoid experienced a Command System Freeze, it tends to have a similar effect to a judo chop in a James Bond movie - it`s out like a light and won`t be getting up soon enough to do any good.   
  
In this case, that wasn`t just inconvenient, it was also potentially _fatal_.   
  
"Get up..."   
  
The Blade Liger carelessly stepped away, wandering out in front of the now helpless Shadow Fox with the grace of a predator that now knew its prey was so helpless, it could just stand there and wait for the perfect moment to strike and crush both the prey`s _hope_, and the prey`s _life_.   
  
Then again, Rayth Takahori had never been one for playing around with his food, just because he happened to be the brain of an ancient Zoid now didn`t change that. Three more shots rang through the air, the unconscious Shadow Fox shrieked in pain as one cheek and ear were born scorched and bent out of whack, threatening to break off outright, cockpit glass promptly cracking on Mark`s left as he continued trying to bring the Zoid back up.   
  
And then the ground around the Black Blade Liger blew apart in four dual explosions, four on each side, before the smaller Zoid, briefly caught off guard enough that its reflexes were slowed, took a hit from a certain low flying Zabat, the aerial Zoid`s heavy feet acting like a pair of heavily armored baseball bats as they smacked into the shoulders of the Liger and threw it right off of its feet.   
  
The Zabat swooped back up like a glider, both wings outlined in the evening by their own eerie glowing as the Blade Liger flipped itself upright and landed with a skid, now bearing a pair of _visible_ cracked dents across either shoulder, head turning to glare up at the second interruption of the evening.   
  
"You alright, newb?" Pierce asked rather nonchalantly, bringing the Zabat up and around for another pass as Mark breathed a sigh of relief. It was all the answer she needed, and all the answer she was going to get since he was too busy trying to reboot the Shadow Fox`s Command System to bother with a witty retort.   
  
The Black Blade Liger roared its displeasure at the newest arrival, glaring death up at where Pierce had flown to, easily out of range of the blades and claws, and since the smaller Zoid couldn`t exactly tilt its only ranged gun to point up at the skies, out of range of the triple impact cannon as well.   
  
The Zabat banked hard, coming around for another pass with both guns blazing. Rayth was ready this time, though, holding his ground with a feral growl as explosions threatened to tear his Zoid to pieces. Pierce was a good pilot, that much was pretty obvious, but even the best pilots had a tendency to underestimate opponents if they were coming out of what looked like hard-fought battles, and this was no different.   
  
Explosions bit and clawed at the sides and back of the Black Liger, still it held its ground. The Zabat came ever closer and -   
  
"Not again..."   
  
- promptly had its guts ripped out as the Black Blade Liger`s swords tilted straight up. Pierce let out a disgruntled yell as the Zabat shuddered, seeming to go into slow motion as the blades plowed through armoring around the base of its neck, slicing through the rest of the body with little trouble and splitting the feet right in half from the ankles down to the soles, causing the fresh wounds to explode in a hail of sparks and fire, just as the cockpit blew open and a familiar, green haired women went flying out, her parachute deploying at low altitude.   
  
"I lose more Zoids that way," she mumbled out, obviously referencing her bad luck when it came to saving or fighting with Ligers - Blade Ligers in particular.   
  
Realization dawned upon her, however, that as her Zoid crashed and burned not too far away, she and Mark were now completely defenseless, left to the mercy of an opponent that had just crushed _both_ of them with _ease_.   
  
"This just _isn`t_ my night..."   
  
  
An ungloved hand softly laid down upon the smoking, charred glass that had formed in one of countless craters.   
  
**[**_Explosions sounded across the city, a black silhouette only vaguely apparent in the distance._**]**   
  
It was warm to the touch, warm enough that, had he arrived a few minutes to an hour earlier, he gambled that he would`ve been able to try and stop what had happened, or at least spot the actual perpetrator.   
  
** [**_Steps thundered closer, the ground rattled and a dozen or so already beaten Zoids rushed into action. A Heldigunner, several Pterases, two or three Command Wolves, an Aro Saurer, a Gojulas Gunner and a Shield Liger. Against normal opposition, they would`ve seemed an almost invincible team, able to strike from the sky, face to face or even from beneath an enemy`s feet. Against the foe they were trying to take on?_**]**   
  
Almost softly, his fingers traced circles through the burnt, ashy dirt and glass, somehow avoiding being pricked or cut in the process.   
  
** [**_They were **nothing**._**]**   
  
"Something horrible happened here..."   
  
** [**_Gunshots rang out, loud enough to overshadow the sounds of the titan`s footsteps. In unison, two of the four Pterases went down, both of them tearing apart from only one or two actual impacts, the remainder of their bodies shredding from the wind sheer of the rest. The other two went down not long after, one getting caught in the path of one of the larger guns as it fired, the other getting caught by an anti-air missile ramming into its throat._**]**   
  
The Geno Breaker rumbled in agreement, blue optics dimmed slightly as it regarded the hellish area.   
  
** [**_The Gojulas went down next, caught right in the path of one of the battleship Zoid`s dozen or so cutting lasers. The beam plowed straight through the cockpit glass and tore through the Gojulas` head, the pilot was probably lucky that he had been vaporized from the stomach up instantly. The Aro Saurer had the misfortune of being near the line of fire at the same time, and as a result, was cleanly sliced in half along the line of the cockpit._**]**   
  
"... Too bad we couldn`t help," he sighed idly, finally standing up and pulling his glove back on. Bodies littered the ground in several places, most all of them burnt or mutilated by debris, fire or some other after effect of a massacre. Men, women, children, the eldery, family pets...   
  
** [**_"Have all the exit points been sealed off yet?"   
  
"Yes ma`am," a lieutenant answered hastily. "We`ve had several escapees though."   
  
"It doesn`t matter. Ready the main guns."_**]**   
  
There had been _no_ mercy, probably only scarce survivors, none of whom he could actually try and help.   
  
** [**_The battleship Zoid`s neck bent forward slowly, leaving all twelve of the gigantic cannons - stacked with six mounted on either side in rows of three - to level onto the city, each barrel starting to spark from within as power built up._**]**   
  
"Any suggestions?" He asked, blithely turning to look at the Zoid standing behind him, only to recieve the equivelent of a shrug. It had been the Breaker`s idea to come here in the first place.   
  
** [**_The Command Wolves shrieked and died, one eviscerated by defensive machine guns, the others sliced in half and beheaded with two swift passes from a pair of lasers. It didn`t matter._**]**   
  
He nodded, reaching up and tugging at the collar still wrapped uncomfortably around his neck.   
  
** [**_"Guns to full power."   
  
"**FIRE!**"   
  
The world went mute, and Romeo City ceased to exist._**]**   
  
"Let`s go then. We probably wouldn`t have been welcomed here even if these people weren`t dead."   
  
The Geno Breaker rumbled its reply with what seemed similar to remorse. Its chest soon flipped open a moment or two later, the cockpit chair and part of the console extending down with it as Bill Chapman stepped forward.   
  
Once it had extended in full, he climbed onto it, briefly pausing to fit his safety harness into place. With the ground becoming increasingly distant as the chair began to recede back into the cockpit, and by default, the chest of the Breaker, his neon blue eyes narrowed heavily with stress and sleep deprivation, not to mention hunger.   
  
"I`m sorry we couldn`t help. Rest in peace," he offered to the countless bodies, craters and burnt piles of debris that lay across the ground. The heavy chest plate of the Breaker slammed and clamped shut not long after, and the real light of the moon - barely able to pierce the thick clouds of black smoke above - soon gave way to the sterile, false light of the cockpit.   
  
The Zoid turned a step, then launched off of the ground in a furious, rocket-propelled jump, its next destination already planned out.   
  
  
Death approached on four legs, each of them black with golden, clawed feet. It had the form of a lion and a tiger at once, combined with the unstable look of numerous smaller wounds, some of them smoking, others simply visible upon its body with no added effects. For Pierce Summers, on any other night, it probably wouldn`t`ve been terrifying in the least, but right now?   
  
She had no Zoid. Her would-be future brother-in-law was still trying to pull the Shadow Fox out of a seemingly comatose stupor and any reasonably effective back-up was probably miles away. Her Zabat was burning to bits in the distance and her Storm Sworder was _still_ shot from injuries taken during the battle with the Geno Breaker. All she could do, logically, was stand there and calmly proceed to undo the straps of her parachute.   
  
Most people would`ve been trembling in fear, having come to the realization that they were about to die in some hideous, quick and maybe also painful way. Over the past months, Pierce had gone through no less than three or four battles where she`d almost been killed, and on top of that, most of her battles as a member of the Backdraft Group, both in training and afterward, had been relatively life-or-death situations.   
  
To be particularly blunt about it, Pierce no longer really gave much of a shit either way.   
  
"How`s the Fox comin`, newbie?" She shouted up over her shoulder, knowing full well that Mark was probably freaking out so badly that he wouldn`t have been able to reply with more than an annoyed yell - at _best_.   
  
As it stood, the Fox merely growled dimly as the cockpit flipped open, revealing her would-be in-law in all of his foul mouthed, obnoxious, quasi-maniacal glory.   
  
"**_THIS SHIT WON`T FUCKING WORK!_**"   
  
"Your luck can`t pull you through everything," Pierce shrugged, undoing the last shoulder strap as the Black Blade Liger continued to close in. At this point, she was just ignoring the steady tide of her own imminent demise.   
  
"**_GET UP, DAMNIT!!!_**"   
  
"You haven`t learned a thing, huh?" She asked, calmly leaving the parachute straps to fall to the dirt without a sound. The Liger kept approaching, both blades folding back down towards the rear, its movements flowing like the vivid, harsh death they promised.   
  
"Your luck`s run out, Mark. Die with some dignity, will ya?"   
  
Silence. The younger of the two finally stopped glaring daggers into the console and looked away, eyes shifting onto the woman`s defiant form, her hands still hanging limp at her sides and her brows still furrowed in annoyance.   
  
"You can die if you want, but-"   
  
The Black Blade Liger cut the conversation short, leaping into the air with one claw drawn back...   
  
  
** [**_"Since you won`t start us off, **I will**."   
  
"Definately need to learn to **look** before you leap."_**]**   
  
A groan.   
  
** [**_"Come on, don`t die on me today..."_**]**   
  
If he had been hurting before, the world felt like it was defined by the word _pain_ now.   
  
[_"Get up..."_**]**   
  
Screaming in the distance, the smooth, gentle breeze upon his face...   
  
_ "Punted through a city and shot to shit in one night... Can`t a guy get some respect?"   
  
_ The bloody wounds across his arms and shoulders howled a definate negative in response. He could barely even feel anything else, his face had gone completely numb and one of his eyes was either swollen or winced shut too tightly to open, that or he was blind there. That couldn`t be too good...   
  
"**_GET UP, DAMNIT!!!_**"   
  
"Your luck`s run out, Mark. Die with some dignity, will ya?"   
  
A second ticked by as his vision, completely obscured to shades of red and black, managed to clear to the point that he could actually see with his other eye. Not that it did him much good, all he could make out were-   
  
"You can die if you want, but-"   
  
- gold claws, rising through the air, poised to deliver a doubly killing blow.   
  
** [**_"Rayth Takahori."_**]**   
  
"**_I`M NOT FINISHED YET!!!_**"   
  
Time _stopped_ in that instant as the Ivory Blade Liger jolted from recoil. Heartbeats were skipped threefold, the Black Blade Liger seemed to hang in mid-air for an eternity and Rayth - or what was left of him - uttered out a foul curse in what remained of his human mind.   
  
Time moved on. The Black Blade`s momentum altered in a single metal-shattering pair of explosions, sending the smaller Zoid corkscrewing through the air at a right angle compared to its previous orientation. Pierce lurched forward as the shockwave blew her hair down and threatened to knock her off her feet, Mark seemed to rock back into his seat with a howling cackle befitting the lunatic that he could often be and Kyle Mazemia, drenched in his own caked up, burnt blood, grit his teeth together so hard that it rattled his own skull.   
  
** [**_"How the hell?"_**]**   
  
"Get up, Rayth. **GET UP!**"   
  
Almost in stubborn reply, the Black Blade Liger stood up, rolling onto its belly and springing onto its feet.   
  
By then, it was already too late.   
  
Barreling forward like a freight train from Hell, the Ivory Blade Liger`s booster screamed to life one last time with such force that a shockwave ringed from the thrusters, forcing the booster to _pull_ the larger Zoid along rather than trying to push it. At the same time, the blade that had so stubbornly refused to slip down into position earlier on swung forward, and by the end of the next five seconds-   
  
"**_REST!_**"   
  
- it was over.   
  
"**_IN!_**"   
  
Cockpit glass shattered, the smaller Zoid tore from the ground in a flailing cry of pain, trying to sink its teeth and claws into anything it could in vain, unable to even strike at the blatantly exposed cockpit of the larger Blade Liger. In an instant, not only had the glass shattered to bits around the tip of that blade, what remained of Rayth Takahori`s mutilated body had been impaled with such force that his head was severed right into the barrel of one blaster.   
  
Kyle`s eyes, bloodshot, once winced shut as it was, were completely blank.   
  
"**_PIECES!!!_**"   
  
Of its own accord, or perhaps because of the sheer emotional _outrage_ of its pilot, the Liger did the rest. The blaster with Rayth`s burnt head in it promptly tore to life, single barrel flashing white hot within as bolt after bolt of super heated plasma exploded into the Black Liger`s body. The blade had already torn straight through its neck, but the blaster and the collision combined for the real damage.   
  
The Ivory Blade Liger toppled over onto its chin, Kyle jerked forward, hard to the right since his harness had been torn loose at that strap, leaving shallow cuts in his clothing and skin, as well as bruising. The impact jarred the Black Liger loose, flying backwards for a hundred more feet on all fours, skidding the entire way before it came to a stop.   
  
And there, it roared its death cry.   
  
After that, a pillar of white light exploded as its Zoid core went critical and gave out, ripping the creature into two pieces, both of which had fossilized by the time they hit the ground.   
  
Rayth was dead this time. With that knowledge in mind, Kyle passed out, smiling.   
  
  
... Kierda...   
  
Half a continent or more away, a black Organoid who had so long put its past behind it suddenly jerked upright, its blood stained fangs shimmering briefly in the light of another explosion. The death pangs of its only surviving, original bondmate were strong, almost harsh in a way, screaming to him in ways that could scarcely be comprehended by anything but an Ancient Zoidian.   
  
"Hm?"   
  
The Organoid straightened up, dark and expressionless crystal blue optics shifting towards the nearby human, the only organic sentient still standing in the town. Bodies and pieces of them littered the ground, blood had literally pooled to almost an inch deep, the Maxis stood not far away, half a car being shredded to bits in its vile jaws.   
  
You`re not the only one to lose someone tonight.   
  
"Therein lies the difference, Shadow," Kale began to explain, walking forward with a lazy swagger born out of more factors than could be counted. "I was only upset because _I_ wasn`t the one who killed Beck. Who`s Kierda?" He asked, standing right in front of the black Organoid without fear or care, an equal in the massacre that had just played out.   
  
... No one. I`d say we`re finished here, wouldn`t you?   
  
Kale shrugged.   
  
Then let`s go.   
  


_End Chapter Thirty-Two  
  


* * *

  
  
_

**Author`s Note:** Well, all things considered, I do believe this makes up for some of the Kyle Abuse, don`t you think so? If the Rayth-Kyle battle left you scratching your head about what kind of background there was(assuming you couldn`t piece it together as it was), don`t worry. I`ll either explain how it all works out in a future scene **or** I`ll have to show it in a sidestory of some kind(I may already have to write one or two of them as is).  
  
That said, how was this chapter? Good? Bad? OMFG-TEH O_O!!!!1! ?  
  
Oh, and intentionally-delayed kudos to EA for having figured out that yes, Rayth **could** have escaped back when Kale was fragging Garnhelm, though as you can tell, he didn`t dislocate his wrist to do it.  
  
And yes, it was intentional, the Black Blade Liger that Rayth was using and its original pilot **are** Shadow`s original bondmates. And yes, the original pilot **did** look eerily similar to the Katherine, she also had somewhat of a similar attitude. I wanted to mention that her corpse was still in the front seat of the BBL but... Eh...  
  
Oh, and how was the scene with Marry in it? I have plans for her, but so far she`s been a bit of a bitch to write...  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Yes, Beck went out with a bang. Literally :P And yes, Kale`s vacation is officially over, and as you can see, Rayth wasn`t alive much longer >_>;  
  
**Illidan:** Well, here`s hoping I can stay over it, yes? The chapter rate might`ve slowed down, but the quality **does** seem to have gone way up as a result.  
  
**Nyx:** I was just trying to show that Kyle wasn`t exactly in a good state of mind :p Glad you`re enjoyin` the story so far :]  
  
Four chapters to go `til the end, folks! Here`s hoping I can keep up the insane level of length per chapter...  
  
That`s all for now, enjoy, leave a review, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
  



	33. Aftermath

  
  
**Foreword:** Music is as follows.  
  
**Scene One:** Rurouni Kenshin - Fallen Angel(or Trigun - Not An Angel)  
**Scene Two:** .hack//Sign - Fake Wings(Bittersweet Version)  
**Scene Three:** Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse  
**Scene Four:** Lord of the Rings - May It Be  
**Scene Five:** .hack//Sign - A Stray Child  
**Scene Six:** Moby - Porcelain  
**Scene Seven:** Trigun - Not An Angel  
**Scene Eight:**  
Zoids - Riese  
.hack//Sign - Aura(Evil Version)  
Rurouni Kenshin - Frozen Flare  
Zoids - Childhood Memory  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Aftermath   
  
  
  


"I... Pierce, I don`t really know how to than-" "Stuff it. He saved _my_ ass, but if he bleeds all over the backseat, _you`re_ cleaning it up."   
  
** [**_"You rotten, conniving, backstabbing **FUCKERS!**"   
  
"You`re a big boy, Rayth. You don`t need us to get out of here," a younger Kyle Mazemia pointed out. "Especially not with that Kale guy to help you out."   
  
"**I BARELY EVEN KNOW HIM!**"****_]   
  
Voices. Some distant, some imagined, but all still clearly audible.   
  
"I`m sorry I couldn`t do a better job patching him up but..." Another sentence trailed off to what seemed like a background haze.   
  
"Don`t worry about it, Abbie. You did what you could, we`ll probably be able to do better when we get to the base," one of the first two voices replied. It was the harder, second voice, the one that had cut the most familiar of the group off a few seconds before.   
  
** [**_"**REST! IN! PIECES!!!**"   
  
** Blam. Blam-blam-blam.   
  
** The world went black._**]**  
  
"Whflbguh..."   
  
Not the most coherent sounding thing to get out, but it was proof that he was alive, at least. Even more proof followed when he heard a slightly high-pitched screech of what sounded like joy, then felt an immense pressure wrapping itself around his beat-up carcass.   
  
"**_YEOW!!!_**"   
  
"_Whoops_!" Katherine almost yelped, prying herself off of Kyle`s brutalized form so quickly that she almost flew right into the passenger seat. Pierce spared her a quirky glance before looking back to her side at the splitscreen view of Abbie and Mark. Abbie`s face was still dripping with a bit of sweat, her eyes were still glistening and her face still a bit damp from having bawled herself senseless earlier on, but she was smiling now.   
  
Mark, on the other hand, bore a grin as wide and smug as a confident poker player who`d just gotten drunk off too many victories. Pierce snorted.   
  
** [**_Silent and completely dumbstruck, the green haired pilot stood there, staring straight ahead with the blankest expression of her life, arms limp at her sides, several stray hairs sticking out and curling this way and that. Across from her, in the cockpit of the still-downed Shadow Fox, her would-be brother-in-law was grinning like a complete **idiot**, almost on the verge of bursting into hysterical laughter.   
  
"I do believe you were saying something about my luck running out?"   
  
"... Just... Shut up..."   
  
A deranged cackle rang through the desert._**]**   
  
"What happened?" Kyle asked, a bit bleary as he tried to sit up, only to find that doing so caused an instant _surge_ of pain to run down his back, shoulders and legs.   
  
"Well... There`s good news and there`s bad news. Bad news is that ya went fifteen rounds with a pissed off wrecking ball and got the shit stomped outta ya. Good news is that ya _won_," Mark answered with palpable amusement, only to continue before Kyle`s sore brain could finish processing the information enough to ask his next question.   
  
"And yes, the Blade Liger is... Alive. It`s gonna need one bitch of an overhaul, but it`ll survive," he added. Again, before Kyle could ask his next question, Pierce cut him off. She wasn`t quite as amused as her sister`s boyfriend.   
  
"We`re hauling it on the trailer I`d been using for my Zabat. Since the Zabat`s _gone_ and all..."   
  
"Thanks."   
  
"Don`t mention it," Pierce replied with a bit of a sigh, tensing briefly and then popping her neck before speaking again. "You`re lucky enough to be alive yourself," she pointed out.   
  
"How`s that?" Kyle asked blandly, finally managing to pry one of his eyes open and look around. His vision was still low on detail, and color shifted so that everything was either red or some shade of black, but at least he wasn`t blind or anything.   
  
"You must not remember how the cockpit glass shattered all over you in three explosions at once, or how you probably came within a few inches of being crushed to death when you finished that thing off," Mark pointed out. "If it wasn`t for Abbie, you`d probably be dead right now..."   
  
"I didn`t do _that_ much," Abbie`s relatively demure voice cut in. It was odd to hear someone as perky and easily pleased as her sounding the way she did right now. "And I won`t be able to do very much until we get to the base... And that`s if they even have any real _supplies_ to begin with."   
  
"Don`t undercut yourself, jiggy-bug," Mark shot back, sounding as if he really _didn`t care_ who heard him at this point. Really, losing just about everything in one night could do that to a guy.   
  
"Can it, meathead," Abbie retorted a bit sharply, glaring off to the side at where the screen with Mark was probably being displayed in the other Gustav`s cockpit. The only reply was another half-insane grin, at which point, Pierce cut back in.   
  
"Get a room," she said, promptly silencing both of them at once.   
  
"How much longer until we arrive at the base?" Kat asked from where she was knelt down in the foot of the back seat, practically obsessing over Kyle with about as level a head as one could imagine. She was upset, but even now she was holding it together with more composure than anyone else probably could`ve managed in that situation.   
  
Outside, the Shadow Fox let out a rumble, Mark paused briefly to glance around and set his eyes squarely ahead, though it was to the left in the pop-up window that Pierce was viewing him through.   
  
"About six minutes at this rate," he clarified, looking over to where the window with Abbie in it was probably located in the Fox`s displays. "How`re the folks holdin` up?" He asked.   
  
"As well as can be expected... A few of them freaked out when we turned back to pick up Kyle and I had to try and patch him up with that first aid kit... But they`re doing better now, I guess," she answered with a small shrug. Pierce was the only one to question her.   
  
"No one tried running off or screaming bloody murder or anything?"   
  
"_Pierce_," Abbie snorted a bit more harshly than normal, almost, but not quite glaring at her sister through the vidlink. "These people just lost _everything_, some of them don`t even have _families _anymore. When I went back to check up on them, most were still crying their eyes out or passed out in exhaustion," she growled, turning back ahead as the dark blue Gustav sped up slightly alongside Pierce`s own, with the Shadow Fox still limping a few yards ahead of them both. Mark`d had to crash through a reboot of the Zoid and it was still _quite_ dizzy afterward, looking almost like it had a drunken swagger to it.   
  
"Point taken," the older sister replied dimly, her tongue soon finding its way into her cheek as the group continued onward.   
  
  
In the heart of Fortress Champton, a single, somewhat petite hand tapped softly upon a large, expensive door. It was such a gentle wrapping, no one inside could`ve heard...   
  
_ "I can still delay this... A little longer,"_ Marry Champ told herself, hand starting to lower back down as she thoughtlessly gnawed on the back of her lower lip. It had taken up most of her nerve to speak to someone other than Benjamin and Sebastian, the two robots who had tasked themselves with handling what remained of the Champ family as best they could, though there were still others who _tried_, not that any of them succeeded beyond making sure the group was fed and as healthy as possible.   
  
More and more, it seemed like the doting, slightly overbearing big sister who ranked in as the second youngest of six children was obsolete in the role she`d so often tried to claim for herself - head of the household in their parents` absence. When her mother and father were around, she was just a simple go-between with everyone else, even if she _did_ have authority, but without them?   
  
It seemed the _real _leader had practically risen out of the ashes while they were still burning hot. Harry had shocked all of his siblings when they`d learned that he really _had _taken control of things as swiftly as he did.   
  
Now, with that all ground into her somewhat darkened mind, Marry found it more and more difficult to try and measure Harry up to herself because in so many ways, he had surpassed her. His 'useless hobby' of piloting Zoids had given him the skills to pilot practically any Zoid in the city, his relentless fawning over that lower class _thug _of a girl had given him what seemed like the motivation to keep going when everyone else had crumbled and his time away from Champton`s sheltered walls had given him the chance to make connections. He`d been down in the trenches and, really...   
  
How could a young woman who`d spent close to three weeks locked up in her bedroom bawling her eyes out like a little girl measure up to _that_, especially after all of the times she had blown herself up to be so much more than she actually was? Still, she needed to speak to him, to let him know that even if he _had_ risen above the rest of them in such spectacular fashion, at least one of his siblings _hadn`t_ abandoned him. Not completely.   
  
Slowly but steadily, she knocked at the door again, five times in a row, audible this time. Her expression shifted from that false smile to one of stone, a look that was usually only seen in one of several situations, usually when someone had spilled her pudding.   
  
The knob turned, her expression started to rise and-   
  
"_Oh_... Who are you and what are you doing in Harry`s bedroom?" She asked, as politely as she could manage, even if it _did_ sound like a viper`s hiss, barely restrained as it was.   
  
"Harry`s sleeping and you feel like shit. Come on in," the scarred girl with pinkish-red hair, wearing a set of obviously new, full length pajamas said without missing a beat, pulling the door open enough for Marry to step inside. True to the girl`s word, he was half-sprawled out across the couch in his apartment-like bedroom`s equivelent to a living room area, a bowl of mostly eaten popcorn lying on its side in front of him with a delicate looking sheet spread out across him. He was snoring and looking more content in that moment than he probably had in a month and a half, if not longer.   
  
Once the blonde had stepped into the room, the door shut without even the slightest of sounds and the girl spoke, answering Marry`s question before it could even be asked.   
  
"My name`s Leena Tauros, guess you forgot who I am since you last saw me, huh?" She asked, sounding eerily pleasant in sheer spite of the awkwardness of the situation.   
  
"... Pardon my asking but..." Marry was cut off.   
  
"The scars? Don`t worry about it, they were caused by Vega Obscura`s brother shorting out my Gunsniper`s cockpit so badly that I got fried from the energy discharge," Leena explained, calmly taking Marry by one shoulder and leading her towards where Harry kept a stocked fridge and a private dining area, though it was really only fit for two people at most.   
  
"I... This..."   
  
"Yeah, it`s awkward for me too. I didn`t think I`d ever see you again. You look like you`ve been through a wringer," the girl said, guiding a fairly willing Marry into sitting down at the table without even the slightest bit of protest. "Orange juice? Soda?" Leena asked, only to answer herself before Marry could even finish computing the question. "Orange juice it is."   
  
"What _are _you?" The older girl finally blurted out, completely baffled by how the conversation had been turning out.   
  
"Depends on who you ask," the younger of the two replied, pulling out a thin carton of orange juice and setting it down on the table in front of Marry, then looking back into the fridge.   
  
"What do you mean?" Marry asked, still dumbfounded even as she pried open the carton and paused before she could take a sip.   
  
"Harry`s girlfriend, overclocked scarface, trigger happy bitch... Really, take your pick."   
  
"_Harry`s girlfriend_?!" Marry sputtered in disbelief, briefly glad she _hadn`t_ taken a sip of her orange juice. She probably would`ve choked on it in shock.   
  
"Not sure if it`s official yet, but yeah, pretty much," Leena casually answered, still rifling through the fridge without even blinking over how strange the conversation was. "You cry a lot nowadays, huh?"   
  
"... How are..."   
  
"I got overclocked by a god program. I`d probably burst a blood vessel trying to explain it as anything else," the other girl answered, standing up finally with a sandwhich in a plastic bag. "You`re hungry, right?" She asked. Marry only nodded, watching as Leena nonchalantly tossed the sandwhich, still in its bag, onto the table, where it slid to a halt, pointed directly at Marry.   
  
"Could you, um, please stop cutting me off?" The Champ sister finally asked with a low tone of voice, opening the small bag and drawing the sandwhich out. Leena only shrugged.   
  
"I guess it would get a _little _annoying after a while, wouldn`t it?" She asked, shutting the fridge and stepping over to the table. Marry was normally something of a delicate eater, at this point though, she didn`t much care for manners, especially not considering the company she was in. Leena Tauros hadn`t exactly seemed like someone who really _cared _about manners, after all.   
  
In fact, Leena had seemed, more or less, the exact opposite of virtually _every_ female member of the entire Champ family - barring that ego of hers, it was almost on par with Nicolette. With the addition of her scars and the sudden shift in her attitude, it seemed even more so.   
  
"You`re feeling obsolete because you can`t provide for Harry like you used to," Leena pointed out, having already seated herself by the time that Marry had been rowsed out of thought and chewing on food that had already been reduced to mush. She swallowed with a quirked brow.   
  
"Do you read minds?" She asked curiously, changing the subject right off the bat.   
  
"Schubaltz probably could, I`m just guessing off of your movements," Leena answered rather nonchalantly. "Now stop dodging the point."   
  
"What _point_? That my youngest brother no longer needs me because he has you, his _likely_ future wife?"   
  
"If we survive all of this, yeah. That point," Leena replied, still wearing her newly donned kid gloves. If she had been her old self, she probably wouldn`t`ve been above using those newfound abilities to snap Marry like a twig - psychologically or physically.   
  
"I don`t know _how _to accept that, Leena," Marry replied, _finally _addressing the other girl by name. "I`ve _always _been the one looking out for Harry, and everyone else for that matter... If I can`t be the one to take care of _him_, what good am I?" She asked, only to continue, her tone too stern for Leena to cut her off. "I`m only a B-class pilot at best, I don`t have any viable skills in directing a battle, I was still learning the ropes of management when Mother and Father..."   
  
"Took a dirt nap," Leena bluntly interrupted.   
  
"... Thank you. But yes, when they took a whatever-you-said. I don`t really have any way to add to things, I`m just a useless burden right now," Marry finished with a sigh, putting down the sandwhich with a glum look and propping one elbow onto the table, her head leaned against its fist. "Do you know... How that feels?"   
  
"Yeah, actually," Leena replied with more honesty than her remarkably well-adjusted tone should`ve allowed. "All you have to do is stop staring at your feet long enough to see the choices in front of you. You`re a Champ, you can boost local morale, or you could do something very..." She paused thoughtlessly, waiting until Marry curiously looked up with one eye blinked shut.   
  
"_Un_ladylike," she said with a pause, continuing. "And dirty your hands by learning how to be a mechanic or a _real_ Zoid pilot. Hell, you could just work as Harry or Sarah`s _secretary _and take a bit of the load off of Benjamin and Sebastian and all their other go-betweens."   
  
"I think I`m starting to see why Harry likes you," Marry pointed out with a faint half-smirk, reaching for where the orange juice was situated and grabbing the carton.   
  
"Actually, ya don`t, but I won`t spoil it anymore than I have to," Leena replied with a slightly cracked smile that almost made Marry re-think what she`d just said. "What I`m trying to say though, is that you`re only going to be a dead weight if you don`t at least _try _to amount to something more. There`ll be an opportunity sometime soon to make a difference, and it`ll be one that _you _grab first," she explained.   
  
"Do you believe _any _of what you just said?" Marry asked, taking a quick swig off of the orange juice carton and then straightening up, looking less regal in under a minute than she had in the previous eighteen or nineteen years of her entire _life_.   
  
"Nope. Made you feel better though, didn`t it?" Leena asked, once again cracking a smile similar to that of a depraved lunatic. Marry only chuckled in response before finally speaking.   
  
"It did, actually."   
  
  
"Say hello to sweet salvation, ladies and glass bowl fetishist," Mark`s voice rang out over the comm, bringing Kyle out of his stupor of sweet nothings from Katherine with an annoyed glance in the direction of where he guessed the transmission was being displayed.   
  
"You`re never gonna let me live that down, are you?" The brutalized hero-of-the-night asked, a twitch starting to form in the eye he could actually open, his vision having finally started to clear up a bit.   
  
"Not a chance in Hell," Mark replied.   
  
"Cut `im some slack, newbie, we wouldn`t even _be_ here without him," Pierce cut back into the conversation with the tone of a forum moderator who was just a _bit_ stressed.   
  
"Yeah, show some respect, newb..."   
  
"Bah. Like he`d`ve even been able to do it without _us_ bailing him out," Mark pointed out with a smirk.   
  
"Mar_kie_," Abbie growled lowly, violet eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "You`re _being **difficult**_."   
  
"Fine, fine... Last thing we need right now is for you to chew my ass off too. What`s left of it, anyway," Mark shrugged as the Gustavs and the Shadow Fox alike churned to a stop in front of the hangar bay of the Blitz Team`s headquarters. Tauros Farm, as it was affectionately known back in the days when Steve and Rina were the only actual _owners_, but tonight, it had another name, unspoken as it was.   
  
Haven.   
  
"Hey, Mark..."   
  
"Eh?" The Fox pilot asked, glancing over at Pierce`s video image.   
  
"Is the _hole _in the front door just a new renovation since the last time I showed up here or what?" The older Summers daughter asked, obviously a little apprehensive about the possibility of walking into a virtual firetrap, and if the base had been ransacked of supplies, it was going to be an even _more _temporary shelter than originally intended.   
  
"... I`ll go in first and check things out, keep the engines running," Mark ordered, just as the Shadow Fox started to stumble forward with all of the grace of an annoyed drunk. Its combat system wasn`t even operational.   
  
For a few tense moments, even Katherine turned her attentions to the screen with the profile view of Mark`s face on it, and then a sigh of relief came over the link.   
  
"Only things in here`re a Raynos and a few tons of equipment and spare parts. I don`t know why the door is busted open like that, but if we were dealing with bandits, nothing`d be left," he explained, leaving the tension that had built up in a matter of seconds to fade away as quickly as it had come. The Gustavs churned back to life a few moments later, with Pierce leading Abbie into the hangar and both parking it not far from where the Liger Zero and Scout Fox usually stood.   
  
Cockpits flipped open, the Shadow Fox submissively trudged its way over to where Leena Tauros` Gunsniper originally stood virtually every day when not in a Zoid battle, coming to stand with its back to the wall and the Raynos to its side, each Zoid paying the other little, if _any _attention. At that, the black canine slowly lowered itself down to the steel plated floor, its own cockpit flipping open as its pilot wearily undid his safety harness and stood up, watching as both his girlfriend and his future sister-in-law disembarked.   
  
_ "That reminds me," _he thought absently, plopping down on the edge of the open cockpit, then swinging his way off of it and to the floor. The Fox rumbled and stood back up, leaving its cockpit open for the time being. _"I never did get around to poppin` the question back when we were on vacation... Not that I have a **ring **or anything, but hey..."   
  
_ Thoughts of impending engagements were pushed aside for the duration as the Shadow Fox pilot stretched out his limbs and stifled a yawn, glancing over to the busted door. It had been ripped open, rather than outright blasted, almost as if a battering ram had smashed into it at higher than mach one or two. Thoughts of _that _soon went onto the shelf as well as he finally started crossing the distance through the hangar, watching as Pierce and Katherine started to help Kyle`s banged up self out of the first Gustav while Abbie lifted the nameless boy up and out of the second.   
  
The kid never made eye contact with anyone but his own reflection on the floor, it seemed, and that both unnerved and caused a stir of interest in both Mark _and _Abbie, though neither really had the time to speak.   
  
"I`m guessing the Raynos belongs to one of the Blitz Team members?" Kat asked, having never really followed the rapid advancement of the Blitz with enough interest to memorize the names of anyone but Leon Tauros and Bit Cloud.   
  
"Yeah, Jamie Hameros owns it, which _probably _means he`s the only one here," Pierce answered before Mark could. "Don`t know why he`d blow open his own home`s front door though. From what little I saw of him face to face, he never quite seemed the violent type..."   
  
"Wasn`t him," Mark pointed out. "None of the door was cut or blasted, just burnt and ripped," he explained, offering an arm to take the load of Kyle`s sagging, exhausted and completely bloodied form away from Katherine. She shook her head, Pierce just shrugged him off.   
  
"Did you get the chance to learn the layout of the base?" Kyle asked, although it was obvious that he was probably going to pass back out in a matter of minutes simply from being on his feet.   
  
"Nope," Mark shrugged. "Only the hangar. I`m sure it isn`t _too _complex since people have to _live _here and all..."   
  
"Think they`d have a room for medical care?" Abbie asked, taking the boy`s hand and giving a reluctant glance to her two trailers, all of which were filled with mostly silent, sometimes sobbing people, many of whom were asleep by now. She didn`t lack the heart to make them wake up, maybe their dreams were more pleasant than reality right now.   
  
"Considering that this place seems like it was an old military outpost at some point, and seeing as how it`s not exactly a quick trip to get to town, it wouldn`t surprise me," Kat pointed out, pausing slightly to compensate for her barely conscious boyfriend`s weight. Pierce was completely unphased, despite being classed by more than a _few _men as an überbabe, she was probably strong enough to sling both Mark _and_ Kyle over her shoulders and make a good two or three mile run in the process.   
  
"You gonna come help patch him up?" The older sister asked, glancing over at Abbie.   
  
"Let me find a decent place to leave him," she began, glancing down at the boy who was still holding onto her hand and staring at the ground. "And I`ll be right after you..."   
  
"I can handle it," Mark pointed out, drawing the attention of virtually everyone - almost all of them giving nothing short of a _morbid _stare in the process.   
  
"... What?"   
  
  
There was a faint rustle in the dim light of the hangar, the scream of the Hammerhead II`s engines was that much more apparent here, giving a background hum and rumble to almost every single thing done or heard, coming just a few steps short of blotting out the background noise of the door even opening to begin with, or the small sounds of hard rubber soles clapping along the cold steel of the floor.   
  
"I thought I`d find you here. I was kinda worried when I didn`t find you on the couch," Vega commented with a somewhat dreary, tireless voice, his eyes remaining in the here and now, rather than their far struck look of so many hours prior during the past day or two. He felt the mental equivelent of a maternal smile, and heard a dual growl that alerted him to the presences of both the others.   
  
** I won`t be going to sleep like that anytime soon, Vega. I can assure you over that much at least. How have things been in my absence? **Specular asked, a good deal more calm and confident than her Voice had been when the boy had last heard her.   
  
"Couldn`t you just skim through the bugs?" Vega asked aloud, coming to a stop and placing a gloved hand to the safety rail, now standing scant yards from where the unarmored Fury stood, the vast majority of its body beneath the catwalk with only the head at level with him. An easily recognizable figure, sleek, inhuman and metallic blue, lay upon the closed hatch of the cockpit, curled into a veritable Organoid donut with yellow optics glimmering in the shadows.   
  
** They`re still too busy trying to adapt to you to really bother with me at the moment. I`ve only been able to take brief glimpses through things, nothing long enough to piece together all that`s happened...   
  
** There was a pause as the Organoid lifted its head up, eyes briefly glimmering a bit brighter than before. Vega cracked a smirk, she looked like some cross between a bettle, a chicken, a raptor and a snake all at once. Still, he regained his composure a few seconds later, staring straight at the Fury with slightly narrowed eyes.   
  
"I haven`t been able to fully reign them in yet."   
  
** You`re adapting to them while they adapt to you. You`re the first human master they`ve ever had, and on top of that they only _just _finished getting over having to go on only one controller, rather than two or even the hundreds who lorded over them before the Endtimes,** Specular answered, calmly craning her neck around to either side as far as it would go. If he`d been paying enough attention, Vega would`ve heard an annoyed comment about metal fatigue.   
  
"I take it you`ve been controlling them for a few centuries, then?" The boy asked, still watching the Fury.   
  
** Roughly seventy years, ever since my last Bondmate - your nine or ten times great grandmother, Riese - abandoned them. The only real reason I took them was to prevent control of them from falling to your mother or older brother.   
  
** "Eh?" He voiced, quirking up a brow as he finally took another step forward, fully leaning onto the rail now.   
  
** Sarah, as intelligent and thoughtful as she no doubt is, is too ruthless and, I believe, too shortsighted to use them properly. Kale would only use them to hunt down percieved threats or spy on women in uncompromising situations.   
  
** There was a sideways glance.   
  
** ... Right. I`ll pass your little... _Indescretions _off as a side-effect of puberty.   
  
** "... _Anyway_," Vega switched the subject, a faint blush storming across his cheeks as he looked back to the Fury. "How was it that I ended up being picked then?" He asked.   
  
** My guess is that it had to do with your proximity to me when I lost control. It could`ve also been their own choice, but that`s up for debate.   
  
** "Right..."   
  
** So then... What`s happened while I was out?   
  
** Vega paused heavily, nodding to himself a moment before explaining things.   
  
"A lot of people died today, and tonight. Bit`s... Whatever-she-is has allowed herself to be captured, he doesn`t know what he`s in for and most of what`s left of neutral zone civilization is starting to pack in to Champton, and... I can`t really sum it up," he sighed, finally allowing himself to sit down with one of the safety rail`s supports as a brace for his right shoulder and that side of his face. "And that`s just _today_..."   
  
** Then, Vega, what`s happened that matters?   
  
** "Too much. I never realized how detached I used to be from reality until a few minutes ago, and now I can`t even _tell _what matters beyond what I`m looking at now," he replied heavily, his eyes distant again. A mental prod jarred him back to the same reality he had complained about.   
  
** Including a girl, I see**, Specular commented with a telepathic grin. Vega had to literally _lock _her presence out of his mind on raw, juvenile instinct alone.   
  
** Well, we`ll leave that part of things alone then. What`s happened to the people close to you?   
  
** "Mom`s hijacked Champton, Bit`s sleeping like a bum - Jamie Hameros is also asleep but more like a war veteran, Brad Hunter and Jamie`s alter-ego are both dead, Leena`s become... I don`t know what to say, Kale..." He trailed off for a moment, then continued. "Rayth has finally been laid to rest by the only one who could actually do it, Kyle, who`s being patched up right now by Marcus Harlock`s girlfriend, and... So much else. Harabec is also dead, he was vaporized about an hour or two ago I think... Maybe longer, I`m not entirely sure."   
  
** ... I see. And... Do you mind if I ask you what`s become of Leyla Tsun and Bill Chapman? Their Organoid as well, if you can.   
  
** "Tsun is having a chat with some guy after waking up from a flashback, Chapman is headed towards the only place he has left to turn to and Borealis..."   
  
** You have no idea, do you?   
  
** "Nope."   
  
** Thought so. Boris always was one of the only Organoids who could hide himself when he wanted.   
  
** "You knew him?"   
  
** ... In passing, so to speak. It`s not important now.   
  
** "Right," Vega half-nodded, finally completing what could best be described as an in-field report to a commanding officer, even if the two were now virtually equal. "And we`re heading for Nyx."   
  
** I know. Do you know anything of Zeke? **She asked, only barely hinting at any real concern as her head began to tuck back down onto the canopy of the Fury`s cockpit.   
  
"Burned himself out like a light last night."   
  
** ... Convenient,** Specular noted, though why she did was unknown. **Everything seems to be falling into place exactly as she didn`t want.  
  
** "Hm?"   
  
** Nothing...   
  
** A terse quiet soon filled the hangar as the boy, the Organoid and the Zoid shared a pleasant, if unspoken and perhaps even foreboding, reunion with one another, however dimly lit and however rickety the setting was.   
  
  
** [**_"Papa, she`s awake," a voice rang through her ears. It was unfamiliar, accompanied by the sensation of momentum from being in a moving vehicle of some sort. Her eyes were slow to draw open as she let out an exhausted yawn, registering the feel of warm, eerily soft metal pressing to one cheek in the form of a snout nuzzling against her.   
  
"I know, Erisi. Let her rest up some more," an older voice, clearly male, replied. The momentum shifted slightly, Reva supressed a groan and forced herself to sit up. Boris rumbled softly and remained in place, optics dimmed somewhat. A second growl accompanied the first, unfamiliar as the man`s voice itself. Her vision began to clear not long after, the world - or what it was currently limited to - came into focus, her eyes cleared and shifted from side to side, then straight ahead.   
  
It was about as spacious as the back of a full sized van, only a single-sized mattress laid out in the back, the foot end pointed to one of the walls, the head pointed to the other with the side pressed against the back wall. A metallic blue Organoid with yellow optics lay curled up behind the front seats, barely two or three feet away from Reva and Boris as the little girl began to turn forward, her entire body sore and dry feeling.   
  
"I... Thank you. I guess," she shrugged as graciously as she could in her current situation. Boris sat up not long after, contrasting sharply to the larger, more mature Organoid.   
  
"You`re welcome..." The father trailed off as momentum came to a slow but steady halt, the sound of the engine dying down still fresh in the girl`s ears as the driver`s seat began to rotate, slowly revealing a man in what passed as the Zoidian equivelent to his mid-thirties or early forties, with dark blue hair that was long even by the standards of the day. His eyes were tinted a more watery shade than those of the larger Organoid, but it was more or less quite obvious that he was the creature`s bondmate. His skin was pale, though his face was strongly defined and handsome even well into his hundreds, though there were obvious stress lines here and there.   
  
"Reva," she finally answered the unspoken question with a dull nod.   
  
"Well, Reva, my name is Riese, and this is my daughter," he paused, glancing expectantly to the chair beside him, which finally spun around to reveal a slightly bubbly looking little girl with an obvious resemblance to her father, though her hair was lighter and kept in a short braid, and her eyes pitched a sedate shade of green, with several Micro Sworders perched on her shoulders and a grin that didn`t quite fit in with the rest of her. She looked like the humanoid equivelent to a half-empty drinking glass.   
  
"Erisi. I heard her name," Reva replied before he could finish, politely - and numbly - placing her hands into her lap and staring at the floor.   
  
"Yep," the other girl replied, still grinning rather... Emptily. A way of coping the horrors that were still wracking the Zoidians left and right, no doubt.   
  
"Where`s her Organoid?" Reva asked, shifting from childhood depression to vacant curiosity, a coping mechanism in its own right. Riese merely cleared his throat as his daughter`s grin faded away, the slightly older girl`s eyes starting to water slightly.   
  
"... Oh. Sorry."   
  
"It`s okay," came the reply just a **bit** too quickly for Reva and Erisi`s father alike, that grin snapping back into view as one of the girl`s brows twitched slightly, her bangs shifting out of the way to reveal a pinkish-red dot on her forehead, large enough to encompass most of its center. "To be honest, I really only noticed you because I couldn`t find any Organoid..."   
  
That hurt. Reva didn`t respond though, and Riese cleared his throat again with a bit more authority, ending the eerily friendly insults right then and there.   
  
"Were you the one who saved me?" She asked, glancing up at the driver of whatever Zoid they were currently packed into.   
  
"No, we found you and your Organoid yesterday evening, a few dozen miles from Tanbriai," Riese answered, his daughter spinning back around to face away from the Organoids and Reva without another word. "To tell you the truth, I was wondering how you survived... Did someone help you?"   
  
"... All I remember is being thrown into a hole and shielded by someone. Not sure who it was or if it was a man or a woman, but... Yeah," Reva answered with another shrug. "I guess it just wasn`t my time yet."   
  
"It`s never anyone`s time," Riese replied, finally standing up from his seat as a gasp of air filtered into the closed-off space, the entire forward half of the cockpit raising up to reveal the waters of a lake, clear as cleanly polished glass but reflective of the hellishly darkened skies above. It was a wonder anyone could tell time anymore at all, let alone down to days and nights.   
  
"But for right now, it **is** time to refill our water... Maybe food too, if this place has any fish," the father said, a dozen or more Micro Sworders promptly flittering into view from outside and plunging into the water as he grabbed an empty gasoline can-sized jug and hopped out of the Zoidian Molga.   
  
Silence remained as the smaller Organoid, and in turn, the younger girl, cowered slightly from their larger companions, until finally...   
  
"Don`t worry about Specular," Erisi said with a sigh, turning around again with an expression of blank calm and perhaps even a vague bit of friendliness. "She`s just... Protective, that`s all."   
  
"Where are we going, anyway?" Reva asked dimly, scooting over to lean sideways against the wall, half-shielding the frightened Boris from the ever attentive gaze of the larger, more mature Organoid. It was Erisi`s turn to shrug as she leaned back into the seat, one of the Micro Sworders flittering softly under a petting fingertip.   
  
"I don`t know... Papa says we`re heading for a place in the Efrank region, wherever that is. He just says... We`re going to sleep there. I don`t know what he means though," she explained as best she could, obviously having been left out of the loop that the 'sleep' planned for her and her father, and Specular too, was intended to leave them virtually frozen in time for uncounted centuries._**]**   
  
It was an eerie sight to behold out on one of the Whale King landing pads. Two creatures stood in place upon the colossal rectangle, only one of which was even identifiable since the other was, more or less, the size of a large beetle. The taller of the two shimmered ever so slightly in the dull light of the twin moons, red contrasting sharply with blue along solid black lines, formed into a checkered, mixing pattern that could hurt the eyes if one started too long.   
  
It was an Organoid. Clad in a light brown jacket, wearing a pair of gigantic sunglasses and a baseball cap with an industrial-sized mop in hand. The inhuman was utterly motionless, optics narrowed impossibly upon the vastly smaller blue-and-silver insect perched upon the tip of the broom handle, its miniature wings exposed and pincers spread wide. A telepath would`ve been able to sense the conflicting energies, each one set to a vastly different wavelength with the stronger flooding the perception of the weaker with false information.   
  
In short, Borealis didn`t feel like being found.   
  
** [**_The first pod slipped shut with a flush of air, Erisi vanished behind an inch of plastic, glass and metal, insulated by a mixture of rubber and several other materials. There was a brief pounding from the inside and then it was over. Riese grimaced slightly, feeling the mind of his daughter slowly fade from alertness and fear due to a brief bout with claustrophobia and vertigo alike, caused by the effects of inhaling the fumes of the gasses and liquids intended to keep her alive and preserved for however long was needed, to a thick numbness, backlit by a feeling of detached awareness.   
  
"Just like going to sleep," the man said, though Reva, now close enough to Specular that she could, and **did **freely clutch at the larger Organoid`s wrist like the hand of a mother, was unconvinced. Her untrained mind had empathetically sensed the shift, heard the half-sounded telepathic cry as the entire world snapped from viewing her father and their companions to pitch blackness and harsh cold. It was almost disturbing.   
  
"Alright, Reva, it`s your turn now," he explained, straightening up from the first console and turning to the second girl, now as if she were a second daughter to him. She only nodded, falling into step behind Riese while clutching onto Specular`s wrist, with Boris bringing up the rear. The floor rattled somewhat, one of the walls split open to reveal three or four dozen more pods, every one of them lined into two rows, each marked specifically with Organoid and Zoidian. The vast majority of the Zoidian occupants were either children or women, maybe three or four men were visible from where the entrance was.   
  
"Why is Erisi`s seperate?" Reva asked almost instantly, glancing back to where her friend and another empty pod lay.   
  
"Erisi and whoever takes that last pod are going to awaken everyone in here... Even if she doesn`t know it," Riese answered, leading Reva down the row of Coldsleepers without so much as a single glance back. The girl, now flanked by both Specular and Boris, followed like an acolyte, her curiosity too intense to let the subject be.   
  
"Who`s gonna take the last pod?"   
  
There was a brief, jerking pause. Riese`s emotions spiked lightly, even Reva could feel it. Specular`s emotions were felt almost instantly in the same manner, though the Organoid didn`t indicate anything of them. The man shrugged, still not answering as he again started walking, only to stop several paces later at the last two unused pods, both of which were still wide open.   
  
"Alright, you two," he said, turning around finally and indicating for Reva to come step into the pod marked as Zoidian. "It`s time to take a long nap... When you wake up, it`ll all be over," he explained with a smile, and the girl did as ordered, disrobing long enough to step into the pod. Seconds later, an internal switch was flipped by whatever means possible and the pod vaccumed shut with Reva inside.   
  
A telepathic flood of disorientation followed - no fear though. Moments went by and it was over, Riese finally let his expression drop as Boris began to wander towards his own pod, slowly but surely.   
  
_** ... I can`t let you do this, Riese.   
  
**_ "We don`t have much of a choice," he retorted bluntly, causing Boris to pause and crane his head around and take in the arguement with dimmed optics and audio alike. "Besides, the remaining pods are suited for Organoids, not Zoidians. I`d die in them either way."   
  
There was a pause. Specular seemed unable to come up with a counterarguement that didn`t involve pulling someone else out of a pod and killing them. She was desperate, yes, but that had always been that Riese would never allow her to cross.   
  
"I knew it was going to come to this the moment we took in Reva and Boris," he explained, causing both Organoids to bow slightly at the same time, even if one of them had to crane its head around even further to do so. "Just take care of Erisi for me. Don`t let anything happen to her, alright?" He asked, reaching out and giving Specular a reassuring pat on the snout.   
  
_** Without me, you`ll probably die of old age before we`re awakened...   
  
**_ "I know," he said slowly, soon letting the subject drop there as he turned to Boris and knelt down, placing his hands to the creature`s shoulders as if it were a Zoidian child. In truth, the bond between Zoidians and Organoids was such that he felt that Boris really **was** one of his children, even through a species barrier.   
  
"What I said to Specular goes for you too, Boris," he began. "Take care of Reva for me."   
  
There was only a low growl and a nod. Boris could understand speech, but he lacked human vocal cords and his abilities with telepathy hadn`t matured beyond projecting emotions and listening in on things. A minute later, the last sound that the small Organoid took in was that of the pod activating, and before that, the last sight he beheld was that of Riese`s somber expression. The next face he would see wouldn`t come for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, nor would it be Zoidian._**]**   
  
**_ Bah.   
  
_** The broom rattled, the Micro Sworder flittered up into the air and promptly shattered from impact with the lengthy handle of the tool, bits and pieces flinging through the air and dropping to the ground with several sounds akin to crumpling tinfoil and bouncing pennies.   
  
Hundreds of miles away, a sleek blue Organoid let out the mental equivelent of a sardonic smile. Borealis went back to sweeping without another thought.   
  
  
A blast of heat, the blow torch was applied and metal began to yield to the forces of intense, highly focused heat, slagging it until it stuck like thick, industrial glue. Dark blue eyes narrowed slightly behind a welding mask, a spark bit at the side of his neck and his thumb snapped away from the ignition switch, which automatically flipped back into place as one thickly gloved hand came up and pushed the mask up and out of the way. Teeth slid around the tip of one gloved finger and anchored the leather in place, his hand was freed, the glove dropped to the floor and his palm held up onto the sting.   
  
_ "Fucking flash burns..."   
  
_ The skin at the point was now effectively sunburnt at four or five in the morning. His teeth ground together slightly, a sigh followed and the man straightened up, leaving his arm with the blow torch to drop limply to his side. Straps were tight, constrictive almost, around his head, shoulders and sides, but the thick flameproof apron and the welding mask were both worth it in the long run. His once pitch black shirt and darkly colored pants were now stained in so many ways that, were they any other color, they would`ve been virtually unrecognizable. Beneath the backwards-turned baseball cap, his short, usually buzzed hair was messy even though it wasn`t even long enough to do more than lay down or point straight up in various directions.   
  
There was an annoying crack of already cooled welding, his head snapped up so quickly that the mask almost flipped back down.   
  
"_Hold it _in _place_."   
  
The beaten looking Shadow Fox issued a growl.   
  
"_Ah-ah_, hold it there or I`m rippin` off the Saltine`s left tooth and castrating you with it."   
  
There was a brief pause. The Fox grumbled irritatedly and Mark shrugged with a similar feel.   
  
"If I could use something else like... Oh say, Kyle`s _spine_, I _would _- but that`s beside the point," he commented offhandedly, finally looking away from the Zoid - which was currently bracing the weight of a fairly _large _slab of metal that would`ve probably been used, under normal conditions, as spare armor plating for the HoverCargo, on one of its front shoulders and on its cheek. "Now quit your bitchin` and hold that damn thing..."   
  
The hangar was virtually empty of any other human life at present. Mark had personally gone to the trouble of waking the refugees and leading them into actual base itself so that they could sleep, hoping the walls and doors were thick enough to be relatively soundproof for the lot of them. In his own way, it was making use of what remained of his somewhat sleepless conscience at the moment, and by busying himself as he was, he didn`t have to think-   
  
** [**_"Deal."_**]**   
  
- about the more-   
  
** [**_***BANG!!!***_**]**   
  
- _unpleasant _events of the closing night. Really, it wasn`t healthy to drown oneself in brooding angst, useless guilt and depression when you had around a hundred or more war wracked survivors and no less than three different Zoids to have to at least _try_ to pass up.   
  
Come to think of it, at this point, Mark was probably thanking any local gods that he`d always kept various tools and such around for handling a breakdown in the desert. He hadn`t much counted on ever using them to stave off hopelessness or block out the dry, nosebleed inducing air of the desert at daytime, but he was still thankful nonetheless. That the base`d had numerous extra tools lying around had been a blessing of its own.   
  
At present, the makeshift addition to the door was about halfway through on the left side, it had taken twenty minutes to get that way. Fox growled again.   
  
"No," he muttered out, bending down and grabbing his glove back off the ground, then somehow worming his hand back into it before reaching up to slap his facemask back down.   
  
"Why?"   
  
There was a jolting pause, the door into and out of the hangar slammed shut, not hard enough that someone angry could`ve done it, only careless. The voice was cold, outright distant and virtually emotionless, as if the speaker could`ve been shot in the groin and would`ve just shrugged and asked for a band-aid. If that. Even more disturbing, it was the voice of a child.   
  
"Shouldn`t you be in bed by now?" Mark asked, actually displaying the presence of mind to not just go back to work. Fox was unappreciative, voicing its discontent with a growl. Whether it was because of having to hold up the slab of metal or the presence of the visitor was unclear. For a long moment, there was silence before finally, the grime covered ex-`Staver turned around, one hand still holding his face mask.   
  
"Shouldn`t you?" The nameless boy retorted, staying where he was standing without even the slightest motion other than the rare blink or the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest.   
  
"The bed I was using got blown to shi-er... Dust. Yeah," Mark replied with a shrug.   
  
"There`s your answer then. Why are you doing this?" Came the counter reply. It almost seemed as if the boy had come just to pick at his motives or something. As if anything else really needed to go wrong tonight.   
  
"Why are you?"   
  
"Because I felt like it," the boy answered impassively.   
  
"There`s your answer then, kid," Mark retorted, practically throwing the child`s own words back at him.   
  
"Why are you still going?" The next question came without missing a step, as if Mark`s previous answer had gone completely unnoticed. Those dead eyes were starting to bore into his skull at this point, but he kept the game up. "Don`t you realize that this is all hopeless in the long run? Harabec didn`t kill that thing."   
  
There was a sudden, hardly noticed jolt in the base of Harlock`s spine, his hand dropped to his side, and in what probably would`ve been his own words, the back of his neck felt like a fucking brillo pad. For how long the shock lasted, he didn`t no, but when it was over, he shrugged again, expression taut for a moment before easing back up as acceptance came to the situation.   
  
"Then I`ll just have to hit it harder next time."   
  
"_Next time_?"   
  
If it were a game of poker, the boy would`ve just lost his face in an instant. It wasn`t a game though, and for a few seconds, neither of them bothered speaking.   
  
"Yanno, kid, when I was your age, my mom always told me that... It`s not always the smartest choice to go charging into a situation where the odds are completely against you, but sometimes, it`s still the right thing to do. I couldn`t save anyone back there, but I can at least try to keep it from happening again," he explained, slowly so as to pick his words. He wasn`t sure if they would have an effect, or what that effect would be if it happened, but he was patient enough to bide his time and let the information fully sink into the boy`s head. If nothing else, it was giving him a rest from inhaling welding fumes.   
  
The boy started, stopped, then started to speak again.   
  
"I think I understand now. I still think it`s stupid though," he replied, only to speak up again before Mark could reply. "Do you mind if I sleep in the Gustav? The smell of death isn`t exactly easy to sleep to."   
  
"Go for it," the older of the two shrugged to his adoptive son, finally reaching up and lowering the mask back down into place before turning back to what he was working on. "The `Stav cockpit is pretty much soundproof when the systems aren`t on anyway."   
  
A moment ticked by, footsteps echoed and Harlock readied to continue welding, only to hear the steps fall short of the still-open Gustav cockpit.   
  
"One last thing..."   
  
"Eh?" He voiced, craning his head to get a view of the boy.   
  
"Don`t call me 'kid.' I have a name."   
  
There was another quiet pause, only the Shadow Fox seemed to let out the equivelent to a sigh of annoyance.   
  
"And that is?" Mark asked, turning back to glare at the tempermental Zoid standing just a few feet to his side and above him, only to receive a counter-glare from its orange optics.   
  
"Alistair. Alistair Edward Smith."   
  
And with that, the footsteps continued until the cockpit slid shut, pulled to a close from the inside. The switch was pressed forward once more, a thin jet of blue, orange and white fire spraying out of the tip of the blow torch, which was promptly applied to the still-present line between the replacement slab and the actual door.   
  
_ "And **they **all thought I couldn`t handle a kid... **Hah**,"_ came a smug thought as metal began to tarnish and melt under the heat of the torch, matched only by the equally smug expression hidden so well by the welding mask over his face. It seemed that even with the world going to pieces and loved ones dropping like flies in a smoked out garage, Marcus Harlock was still lucky enough to find at least one bright spot this evening.   
  
Even if he _had_ made up the saying from his mother...   
  
  
"There," Abbie finally let out with a sigh, wrapping the last strip of gauze around Kyle`s already taped up head. From his toe to his silver hair, he was practically covered in it. One of his eyes was hidden completely by the taping, while the only things that remained of his original clothing were the gloves he _had _been wearing, now cast to the table, and the boxers he was wearing under an improvised pair of pajama pants. His chest, barring the bandages criss-crossing all over it, was bare, likewise with his back and arms.   
  
The only other people in the room were Pierce, still clad in her flight jacket and civilian clothing, Abbie, who was likewise in her usual, if not dirty clothing, and Kat, who was still dressed in her grease covered jumpsuit.   
  
If Kyle hadn`t been so thoroughly _brutalized _by the night`s events, he probably would`ve thought it was some sort of demented fantasy of _Mark`s_ that had tainted his own thoughts.   
  
Not that he really would`ve disliked such a thing, but still.   
  
"All done," the improvisionist doctor said, sliding back from the reclining bed that the man was laid out on, promptly stretching her arms and legs out before literally bouncing to her feet in _just_ the right way that Kyle, were he paying attention, would`ve recognized as the likely reason that Mark nicknamed her 'Jiggy Bug.' Either way, it felt good to know he could move again, even if he was effectively unable to see with one of his eyes due to the bandage trailing through his line of sight and blocking it as a result.   
  
"A round of applause for the pint-sized genius," Pierce commented, mock clapping while leaned against the frame of the door.   
  
"I`m _not _short," Abbie snorted, glaring tiredly over her shoulder. She _still _wasn`t quite used to having such long hours, and after tonight, it was likely she could`ve slept for a week straight without moving an inch.   
  
"... Your boyfriend can use your head as an elbow rest."   
  
"He`s tall," the younger sister complained.   
  
"Not _that _tall, midget."   
  
"_I`m not a midget_!"   
  
Bickering soon became distant with a slam of the door, the two sisters vanished out into the hallway at roughly the same time and Kat was barely a step behind both of them in making sure they didn`t think to come right back, springing from her seated position near the sink and practically scrambling to get the door shut.   
  
"Those two _never _shut up," she complained, finally seeming to decompress from the guarded state she`d been in all night. Kyle could almost _swear _he heard her eyes rolling around like marbles in their sockets.   
  
"Least now we know why the newb`s such a lunatic," he explained, nonchalantly scooting himself upright and then inching to where his legs dangled off the edge of the hospital-like bed, breathing shallow and yawning infrequently.   
  
"With as much as those two blab at each other, _yeah_," she agreed, reaching up to undo her ponytail for the first time in what was probably two days. "Christ, you`d _hardly _think they just lost a relative or a hometown with the way they act..."   
  
"I killed Rayth."   
  
There was a numbing pause. The conversation`s course changed and crashed into a brick wall, Katherine froze in place for several seconds and Kyle held his breath the entire time, even though it felt as though the tension level in the room - formerly nonexistent - had just jumped straight through the roof of the base and kept going. An eternity probably could have passed by within the span of those moments, and neither Katherine, nor Kyle, would`ve registered even an instant of it.   
  
Finally though, the woman spoke, her voice suspiciously even, her expression taut, though Kyle couldn`t see it since her back was still toward him, and her hands continuing to undo her ponytail until her hair, now revealed to be a little past the top of her shoulderblades, flopped down limply, but orderly. It was when she let her hair down that she bore the most resemblance to her younger, now deceased, brother.   
  
"I`m guessing... That he was the pilot of that Liger you shot down tonight?" She asked, still restraining herself. Kyle could tell it was the usual routine, he could also tell that he didn`t have much of a chance of getting her to drop it anytime soon.   
  
"Mark and Pierce filled you in then?"   
  
"Only that it was a Command Wolf-sized Blade Liger with a black paintscheme that fought like a Class S champion," Kat replied allowing her hands slip down to her sides.   
  
"... The piloting style had Rayth stamped all over it. The way his Liger was the opposite of mine also had Rayth stamped on it, so did the way it mocked me when I was down," Kyle explained, leaning forward until his forearms and elbows braced his upper body against the tops of his thighs, lower legs still dangling off the edge of the bed. His good eye had already locked down onto the floor as Katherine began to respond.   
  
"And how did you kill him?" She asked, finally turning around with a face that was as dead looking as Rayth`s could sometimes be.   
  
"Took my good blade, crashed it through his Zoid`s cockpit and pulled the trigger. I think I was screaming the entire time."   
  
"... Right," Kat finally said, and as Kyle looked up, she began to walk forward, expression still bland while she spoke. "It wasn`t like you had much of a choice, I guess," she explained, or started to, that sickening Takahori logic shutting out almost all emotion from her voice. "It was either him or you, Mark and Pierce. A numbers game."   
  
"It wasn`t the same thing," Kyle retorted annoyedly, feeling Katherine`s weight plopping down next to him on the bed. "I could`ve found another way to end it-"   
  
"How? By getting yourself killed? Rayth was a bad seed to begin with."   
  
"But he was still your _brother_," Kyle grumbled, sitting up straight and inching his head around to look at her since she was on his currently blind side.   
  
"There weren`t any other alternatives, Kyle. Rayth had to die and it had to be you who killed him," she replied bluntly. "I don`t hold it against you though... I probably never will since I would`ve probably had to do the same thing."   
  
There was another pause. It was really little wonder why Katherine almost _always _won every single debate or arguement between the two, she had an uncanny way of cutting off every possible counter that Kyle could think up, and wasn`t above resorting to cheap or unfair tactics to do it. With this arguement now ended in 'victory' for her, the silver haired Liger pilot who`d gone from a soccer ball to a hot blooded killer in one night had little to do other than mutely - and slowly - raising his arm up and draping it around her back.   
  
"You`re right," he finally conceded.   
  
Kat didn`t respond, but a tug soon brought the two to lean against each other. Nothing else was said.   
  
  
** [**_"What the heck is all this?" A boy, approximately the age of nine or ten asked aloud, holding up a camping flashlight as he stepped over a piece of rubble. It was some sort of twisted looking chamber, worn down almost endlessly from centuries of hardened abuse by time and careless shellings alike. He had found the way in within an old building situated a few miles out of town - his class had gone there as part of a Halloween field trip, odd as it sounds.   
  
The building was said to be the home of the Blue Devil, a malignant old witch who ate people`s souls and left them as bedridden and amnesiac for however long she desired.   
  
In truth, it was a local myth forged from a decades old cover-up, orchestrated solely by the Guylos Imperial military. The building was ancient, that much was obvious from its unconventional construction, but that didn`t change the fact that it was also originally the last resting place of dozens of Ancient Zoidians and their Organoid counterparts, almost all of whom had died from power failure or collapse through the years, except for a single girl and her Organoid uncovered by a long dead boy by the name of Nikolo.   
  
His Helcat was still standing in the cave that it had died in.   
  
Young Bill Chapman, however, knew none of these facts, and paid them as much mind as the two or three blue, metallic insects that lurked across the walls and floors. He had been stupid, again, and allowed himself to stray from the campsite, located outside the building itself. A dare had been the reason, apparently there was a rumor going around about a little girl being found amongst the ruins by a nosy pair of scientists just a few days earlier, scientists who had promptly left the town without giving even the slightest confirmation or denial about this.   
  
Regardless of rumors and facts though, Bill knew one thing - this dump was **creepy**. Bones lay scattered about, and were he to clear dust from many of the strange looking tubes, he would`ve found partially decomposed bodies and crumbling stone statues, both humanoid and inhuman alike. It had been almost friendly in a hollow, sad sort of way back near the entrance, old, dusty, child-like drawings lay scattered across virtually every wall and a pair of consoles, additionally linked up to a pair of empty, broken looking pods were the center of the first room, while the second had apparently been hidden for centuries only to be revealed by a recent cave-in or someone taking a jackhammer to the huge doors that seperated them.   
  
Careful to not disturb anything, praying he wouldn`t alert anything to his presence, the boy stepped over an unbroken, but long dead power cable, then started to climb up a small pile of debris.   
  
"Don`t be afraid, nothin`canhurtmehere," he reassured himself, only to continue as he scooted himself over the top of the pile, inching his way under the dusty, broken looking ceiling and then righting himself on the other side, his sneakers barely providing enough traction and his jeans catching on numerous dull points, prying small pebbles loose. His dark brown jacket was little comfort against the chilled, stale air of this part of the chamber.   
  
"Just don`t-"   
  
"Be afraid," a woman`s voice growled out with contempt. Chapman`s eyes widened and the chain of events that were going to shape the rest of his life blew into action like a hurricane._**]**   
  
A gloved hand eased slightly on the afterburners as the Geno Breaker arrived at what the Zoid itself considered the turning point, within distant view of a range of mountains.   
  
** [**_Blue insects popped their wings open and flew out of the way at breakneck speeds as a juvenile body went flying with what sounded like the crack of a whip against a baseball bat. Only half were successful in fleeing as the boy, his face now bruised across one cheek with a burning red handprint, crashed into the front of a long dead pod, cracking glass and hardcast plastic, but leaving metal to only bend and dent around the nine year old`s head and shoulders.   
  
He didn`t make a sound after the impact, merely sliding down like a smeared glob of thick paint, shlupping down onto the hard floor, though his body still leaned back against the pod.   
  
"I don`t know why telepathy didn`t work on you, human, but all it means is that you won`t be allowed to leave here alive," his attacker said as his flashlight finished clattering lifelessly to the floor. He was able to make out few things about her through the tears welling up in his eyes and the painful haze further blurring his vision and thought processes. She was thin, her hair was short and blue and she wore an outdated pilot`s jumpsuit that looked beyond vintage Imperial, probably dating back over two hundred years.   
  
"The Blue Devil," he managed to gasp out, the realization slapping him almost as hard as the back of her hand.   
  
"Yes," she replied bluntly, sneering with no mercy. Slowly but surely, she began to step forward with a miniscule limp in her right leg, only to stop halfway and throw out one hand expectantly. Bill felt his clothes tug and pull towards her, particularly at the parts sitting just above his heart, but nothing happened. This brought a perplexed, annoyed expression to the Blue Devil`s face, the pupils of her eyes shrinking down.   
  
Those insects that hadn`t been smashed to bits by his body soon latched onto Bill from almost every angle, countless small pincers gouging into his skin, even through his clothing as he began to struggle, the fight or flight mechanism kicking in with full force.   
  
"I would have rather not had to do it like this, but if I can`t erase you one way..."   
  
"**STOP IT! IT HURTS!**"   
  
"Life`s a bitch like that. Then you die."   
  
Blindly and in pain, the boy threw his arms and legs out and flailed around, feeling an uncomfortably high level of static start to course through his body, standing every hair on end and starting to almost flay the threads of his clothes.   
  
"**WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?!**" He demanded, unable to think of anything else to do or say. Her response was cold, lacking pleasure or guilt.   
  
"Microwaving you," she explained, just as his body temperature began to rise. "No one else is going to desecrate this place, ever again. You will be a simple, gruesome example to future defilers that assaults on my people`s resting grounds will **not **be tolerated."   
  
A hand smacked blindly against a switch, the temperature continued to rise until he couldn`t even bring himself to take the breaths required for screaming.   
  
"I truly feel for you."   
  
Glass shattered._**]   
  
** "So we`ll be there around sunrise then?" Bill asked, feeling the weight of the Zoid shifting to the side as it entered a wide, oddly graceful looking turn, heading south in a straight line.   
  
** [**_An indignant squawk sounded through the chamber, dirt, bits of dust, metal and rock fell and drifted to the floor as a thin, short creature, blue and red but lined with black, stepped into view, looking dazed and confused, but angry as well.   
  
Bill`s abruptly renewed screaming ground to a breathless halt, the woman jolted back as electricity, both blue and an unnatural red, sparked from the raptor-like creature`s body, flittering off in short arcs and fading away while black light filtered out into view between every panel and color change. Optics were an upset, sleepless tone of solid black, only to suddenly spring to life as if they were eyes hidden by wincing lids, revealing a blue and a red eye, bearing no pupils or irises.   
  
In another instant, the sensations had stopped all together, the blue insects that still clung to the boy soon lifted off, flittering away without an unneeded sound as the woman called them back, withdrawing her hand with a snort.   
  
"He`s **desecrating **sacred ground, even a **child **like you should understand that!" She yelled at the beast, recieving only a growl in reply. Bill slowly started to work his way to his hands and knees, body curled up in pain.   
  
"Thankyou," he managed to wheeze out, only to feel energy blurring up all around him as something literally **plowed **into his thoughts in a way that the woman had apparently been unable to.   
  
** Leeagoh.   
  
** Energy flared, the boy was left to stare at the floor as it blurred out into sharply contrasting blue and red fields, seperated by swirling black lines. There was a loud, Core-like hum and then the sound of stone and metal shattering like glass._**]**   
  
The Zoid let out an affirming growl, and Bill again felt it shifting this way and that until it was hovering across the desert sands in a straight line towards a distant archway.   
  
** [**_It was over before he knew it. The presence remained locked in his mind as if it were an animal trapped in a cage, even while the pair materialized out in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.   
  
In this case, the middle of nowhere was a flat, bright green grassland stretching out to the valley that the town was situated in, just barely in sight of a long abandoned military base. It was probably the farthest he`d ever been from home, not counting the field trip that had brought him here to begin with. He was on his feet already, even if he was lacking the balance to stay that way for longer than a few seconds, plopping down into the grass and just sitting there with his eyes locked onto the creature standing next to him.   
  
** Ewoodakeeldyew.   
  
** "Huh?" Bill asked. He still felt the jarring sensation in the back of his brain that told him something wasn`t the same anymore.   
  
** Awohmin. Ewoodakeeldyew**, the creature replied, craning its proportionately long neck to glance down at Bill.   
  
"... What are you?" The boy questioned, now just trying to find some sort of way to explain all of this.   
  
** Erganoyt**, the small Zoid answered with the telepathic verbal skills of a toddler.   
  
"Erganoyt? ... **Oh** - you mean Organoid, right?" Bill asked, his juvenile admiration of Van Fleiheit practically blaring like a bad pop song. The newly semi-identified Organoid snapped upright and hopped once, its tail wagging from side to side as the boy sprang to his feet in a blur. "**COOL!!!**"   
  
A few seconds crashed by as the poor little Zoid-like beast tried to prevent the boy yanking its chest open and climbing inside. It wasn`t quite old enough for someone to ride in it anyway.   
  
"C`mon, lemme in!"   
  
** NO!   
  
** "... Fine, fine... What`s your name?" Bill asked, still unconcerned with the fact that every answer he got sounded more and more as if it were his own voice doing the talking, not to mention the fact that he never actually **heard **a thing, not with his ears anyway.   
  
** Brs.   
  
** "... Bera-wha? That won`t work," Chapman grumbled, still holding onto the Organoid`s claws. The boy was obviously a bit too flighty to notice the fact that said-claws could`ve gouged through his palms at any second if he made a wrong move. "We need to give you a better name..."   
  
Silence followed as one thought and the other blankly stared at him with those mismatched, utterly inhuman eyes.   
  
"**AURORA!** ... No, wait, that`s too girly."   
  
The Organoid nodded slowly in agreement.   
  
"Borealis sound good then?"_**]**   
  
"I wonder," he began, slowly drawing his hands away from the controls since he knew the Zoid intended to go where he wanted it to anyway. "If anyone will be expecting us..."   
  
** [**_"Borealis it is then!"_**]**  
  
_

End Chapter Thirty-Three  
  


* * *

  
  


_ **Author`s Note:** Minor inconsistency involving Bill and Borealis` first meeting, but I`ll edit the problem(which is from an earlier chapter) later on. Likewise, there was some other minor inconsistency I needed to hammer out, but I`ll think it up later :P  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Yes, Bill is back. And expect to see more of him soon. Told you guys I had plans for everyone... *Behehs.* >_>  
  
**Tilly:** Yes, the Ivory Liger avoided death... But it`s gonna be out of action for a **while** now, huh? x_x  
  
**Illidan:** CONGRATULATIONS! **YOU!** are now the 100th reviewer of ROC! *Hands Illidan a cookie and a Random Minor Spoiler, so long as it doesn`t involve the plot or anything.* >_> Glad you liked how Rayth trashed so many people, he was indeed one of the better pilots prior to his demise.  
  
Welp folks, that`s all for now! Enjoy, leave a review and Sh33p out! See ya next time!  
  



	34. Zero Hour

  
  
**Foreword:** Music is as follows.  
  
**Scene One:** Trigun - Not an Angel  
**Scene Two:** Zoids - Any End of the Land  
**Zoids - Riese  
Zoids - Any End of the Land  
Zoids - Wailing Steel  
Scene Three:** Trigun - Scattered Rain  
**Scene Four:** Stabbing Westward - Wasted  
**Scene Five:** Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse  
**Scene Six:** Trigun - Cynical Pink  
**Scene Seven:** G Gundam - Evolve  
**Scene Eight:** Phill Collins - In The Air Tonight  
**Scene Nine:** Rurouni Kenshin - The War of the Last Wolves  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Zero Hour   
  
  
  


Five in the morning. It was still dark out as a relatively short, albeit curvy, figure heaved through the air and landed with a dull plop on top of the only bed in the only room of the Blitz Team base that had ever been reserved for guests. If the woman in question, now almost snoring and completely unphased by the fact she had just been so nonchalantly chucked onto the mattress, had been awake, she probably would`ve wanted someone else to take her place.   
  
At present though, all that Abigail Summers could do was reach up and absently scratch her side, roll over onto her stomach and bury her head in the bed`s only pillow. The room was dark, lit only by a nightlight that was actually necessary for finding one`s way around without the overhead or a lamp turned on, and by light from the hallway, filtering in through the open doorway. Foot steps clicked absently across the rug-covered metal floor, another woman of noticably taller stature headed for the door and stopped, the sound of a lighter and a pack of cigarettes being shuffled back into her pocket as she took a glance over her shoulder.   
  
"G`night, midget."   
  
There was a sleep-clouded grumble, a puff of smoke blew into the hallway and the taller, and only slightly older woman stepped out, the door automatically sliding shut behind her.   
  
_ "And she wonders why I always win,"_ Pierce Summers thought with the trademarked grin of an older sister. She`d won the arguement in question by default, after all. Abbie had literally passed out in mid-sentence back in the hallway, barely five or six minutes earlier. The ever-constant arguement about her height had been the straw that broke the camel`s back, the stress of the past month, topped off by the already overwhelming burden of watching an entire city go straight to Hell and learning of the death of someone close enough to almost count as family had caught up to her in spades and practically knocked her into next week.   
  
Suffice to say, Abbie had more than _earned_ the chance to rest a bit. Pierce was just glad her sister was a heavy enough sleeper that she hadn`t jolted awake in protest over feelings that she might still be needed. The younger of the two had a heart of gold, the catch was that it was a few sizes too big to ever let her fully rest without being completely _exhausted_ if there was something she could help with.   
  
_ "Now what?"_ She thought, tilting the cigarette between her lips until it pointed up towards the ceiling, then tucking her hands in her pockets and glancing around. Aside from her, there didn`t seem to be anyone in this neck of the hallway that ran all the way through the Blitz Team base, only clean floors, matching doors and a vague feeling of cold claustrophobia.   
  
As Bit Cloud had often complained, the base wasn`t exactly the warmest place at night, nor was it among the most comfortable. It would do though.   
  
Cigarette still flicking from side to side, Pierce began to walk off, exhaling puffs of smoke this way and that only to stop at the sound of a voice from behind.   
  
"What are you doing here?"   
  
"Hm?" She voiced, turning to face the door that had apparently opened a few seconds ago without her ever hearing it at all.   
  
She was greeted by the sight of a short, thin looking teen with deeply tanned skin and short, spiked brown hair, with eyes that looked about as emotionally stable as a mental patient. The teen was dressed in clothing that looked two or three sizes too big on him and had a look that almost made him hard to recognize, even though she already knew who it was right off the bat.   
  
"_What_ are you doing here? The Backdraft is gone and the Liger Zero is MIA," Jamie Hameros pointed out with an obvious, and somewhat severe sounding detachment from reality. The way he`d mentioned the Backdraft almost made it sound as if they were still a viable organization. At least things hadn`t been for keeps back then.   
  
"Gee, maybe I climbed out of your hormonal little head to fulfill your every little fantasy," Pierce answered with a roll of her eyes, not noticing how utterly _un_phased the teen was at her remark. From what she`d remembered, Hameros seemed like the type who`d have a _nosebleed _from seeing an uncovered thigh, let alone being teased by someone like _her_. He was silent with a disbelieving expression on his face. She shrugged, taking a drag off of her cigarette and then blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth before explaining.   
  
"Farentown`s gone. A hundred and five people needed a place to stay, Mark remembered where this place was," she said, remaining calm and collected in spite of the fairly bloody events of the night.   
  
"... Farentown`s gone?"   
  
"Kaput. Blown to Hell. Ground into ashes. Gone."   
  
"How the _hell_ do someone wipe out an entire city in one night?" Jamie growled, obviously having trouble believing that a city housing one of the largest populations on the planet had been destroyed in such a way that only a hundred or so people had survived to make it to _his_ team`s base and convert it into a refugee camp. "There`s over a _million_ people in Farentown. You don`t just _delete them _like a shoddy holo-sim!"   
  
"Tell that to the survivors. I wasn`t there," Pierce shrugged apathetically. She`d either made her own form of peace over the past few hours or, more likely, had just gone so completely _numb _that it didn`t even effect her anymore.   
  
"... Where`d you pile them? The hangar?" Jamie asked with a sigh, switching into logistics mode as if it were his only true nature.   
  
"Still in the Gustav trailers, yes," she answered, boredly lashing the filter with her tongue, causing ash to break off and chip down to the floor. Jamie`s eyes followed it on the way down, almost obsessively.   
  
"I`d like it if you didn`t do that."   
  
"Hm?"   
  
"Flicking ash on the floor. Bad enough Brad d-... Used... Whatever, just stop with it," he fumbled, glancing over at the door across from his own. "Be right back," he said, more than earning the bland look of half-curiosity and annoyance that Pierce gave him as a result.   
  
Without a word, she watched the teen vanish into another one of the bed rooms and come back out a few seconds later with an ash tray and a sour look that rivalled the one she had given him before.   
  
"I hope you don`t have any thieves in your midst," he complained, handing her the tray and shoving his hands in his pockets. By all means, he probably would`ve looked threatening if he wasn`t only just tall enough to come up to Pierce`s chin.   
  
"And why is that?" She asked, still bland as she flicked more ash from her cigarette, this time into the tray.   
  
"Because one of Brad`s guns is missing."   
  
  
** [**_Ice water splashed across his face, like a bat out of Hell, the youth sprang forward and sat up - right into an open palm that kept him from yelling out in protest. In vain, he tried to reach up and claw at the hand now clasped like a vice over his mouth, only barely even succeeding in breaking the skin as he was pulled up from the bed, legs flailing.   
  
"Stop struggling or I`ll kill you here and now."   
  
He could only barely see the outline of her rigid, worn looking face, but the malice in those eyes was intense enough that, even though he couldn`t even make out their color, they forced him to stop.   
  
"Good. I`m going to put you down now. Scream, and I`ll kill you. Run, and I`ll kill you. Fight back, and I`ll kill you," she said as matter of factly as if she were giving the weather on a bad day. He could only make a muffled sound of acknowledgement before she put him down, finally lowering her hand.   
  
His heart pounded into his throat, his red and white striped pajamas felt like lead weights and cold sweat was starting to blend with the water still soaked across his face, but he complied nonetheless.   
  
** That wasn`t called for.   
  
** She shrugged, turning to the youth, by now just a step shy of puberty, and glaring down at him.   
  
"I still can`t believe you picked this **trash** over your own Bondmate."   
  
By now, recognition was starting to down on young Bill Chapman`s mind, bringing with it the realization that this was the same woman he had encountered only two years earlier, the same one who had tried to **microwave him**. In that time, he had gotten a few inches taller, nowhere near as much as Borealis had matured(at least physically). The Organoid now stood at almost the same size it would reach upon full maturity.   
  
"The Blue Devil," Bill mumbled out, finally saying the words he had been unable to speak two years ago.   
  
"I haven`t been called that in a while," she commented. "And I don`t care to go by it now. My name is Riese, you **will **address me as that or I`ll show you what kind of devil I **really **am."   
  
** ... Nice name change**, Borealis pointed out from wherever he was positioned. A bit frantically, a bit calculatingly, Bill took a glance to the side, spotting the dimmed glow of the Organoid`s optics. Almost immediately, he regretted it.   
  
"Pay attention to **me**."   
  
A fist ground into his stomach, and without screaming, he doubled over onto his knees. If he hadn`t been paying attention before, he most certainly was now.   
  
"Get up. Follow me."   
  
A bit haggardly, the youth scraped himself up, one hand holding his stomach supportively as he braced himself against the bed and wobbled upright, his vision still swimming in pain. Riese paid his hurting no mind, stepping to the door and opening it before vanishing out into the hallway. Bill, and Borealis after him, followed a few steps behind.   
  
The sight they were greeted with was an eerie one, to say the least. Several of the blue insects from years earlier were spread out across each wall, the floor and the ceiling as well, chirping rhythmically at their mistress. After a few seconds, the pair had made their way down the stairs and arrived in the living room, only to find an even more eerie sight than the last one.   
  
Bill`s immediate family - his mother, father, two brothers and two sisters, were all clustered together in the living room, watching a movie. They didn`t notice him, Riese or Borealis, or the insects perched on them, the furniture or anything else. They didn`t even blink more than once every half a minute, if that.   
  
"... What did you do to them?" He demanded a bit hotly. She shrugged, answering his question as if he were wanting to know what color the sun was.   
  
"I simply altered their perceptions of reality for the time being. To them, you`re still in bed early from having tired yourself out at a baseball game. To them, they`re still watching movies and eating popcorn. To us, they, and the rest of this miserable city, are being vegetables with bugs crawling on them."   
  
"... So it wouldn`t have made any difference even if I did scream."   
  
"None whatsoever," she answered flatly. Bill winced. "Come on."   
  
"Where are we going?" Bill asked as the woman lead him past his family and through the still open front door of his father`s farm.   
  
"To see an old friend of mine. Your Organoid has an interest in him."_**]**   
  
The Breaker let out a growl. Bill only nodded slightly in response, glancing off to his side in the direction where the sun would soon be rising in a matter of an hour or so. It was already twilight, the moons had both finished setting and only the stars remained.   
  
"You can feel it too, huh?" He asked. The Zoid gave another growl, still chugging along at around half of its top speed in the journey towards the distant rock arch.   
  
"I guess the quiet can`t last forever. Not like it ever does for us anymore, but still..."   
  
Another growl. It was obvious that whatever it was feeling was making the Breaker nervous. That wasn`t a good thing.   
  
"Whatever it is..."   
  
** [**_"We`re here," Riese announced all too bluntly for Bill`s tastes. Where 'here' was, he couldn`t quite say, and something at the back of his thoughts told him that he probably shouldn`t have wanted to know either way. With that in mind, he had the common sense to keep his mouth shut for the time being.   
  
Borealis lead the way into what looked like a well aged room big enough to compare to a small Whale King hangar, the once polished, almost reflective steel walls and floor alike now tarnished with the wear of time and age. Dust had collected into fine layers across broken glass that now only half-enclosed what looked like a control room, originally accessable by both stairs and an elevator, both of which were now shut off - the elevator from a lack of power and maintenence, the stairs from the door having rusted shut through the years.   
  
In fact, the only reason that the room wasn`t covered in utter darkness was because of the odd, colorless light seeping out of a pool to one end of it.   
  
** You`ve been able to accomplish a lot in the past two centuries**, Borealis noted absently, though Bill didn`t know what he meant. He hadn`t exactly been privy to any conversations held between the two inhumans during the trip to whatever this place was.   
  
Had he known its history, he probably would`ve been left somewhere between repulsed and fascinated. It was the very chamber that Hiltz had once used to help preserve the first half of the core of what would later become the Death Stinger. The pool, still radiating a dead glow even centuries after the fact, was composed of little more than a blend of Core fluids that served a similar function to embalming fluid, or the sorts of liquids used in cryogenics.   
  
Suffice to say, Bill was more than justified in feeling creeped out by the place.   
  
"It`s waiting for you, Boris."   
  
** Borealis**, the Organoid corrected instantly.   
  
"I still don`t get why you just added three letters to it," Riese muttered snidely.   
  
** Because it sounds better. Where is he?   
  
** "... Yanno, I`m probably not going to get much of an ans-"   
  
"Shut up," Riese cut him off with both her words and an over the shoulder glare. Oh well, he`d tried at least. "The only reason you`re here is because you`re actually needed for this."   
  
"And I`d just **love** to know **how**," Bill grumbled out, having forgotten about a little something that Riese was more than quick to remind him of.   
  
"**Keep your mouth shut,** maggot, or else I`ll **kill you**," she growled loathsomely. Before he could manage a reply, he was halted by an arm crossing out over his chest. Borealis continued onward alone, speaking to himself in the most idle tone that Bill had ever heard from the Organoid.   
  
** I`m almost surprised you`re not his grandmother, the way you act**, the Organoid pointed out blithely, now standing at the edge of the pool with tail curled slightly and neck craning out over the waters. Whatever was inside held a great deal of interest to him.   
  
"He makes me proud to know that my **real **descendants aren`t weaklings like Elisi`s."   
  
** And how is that?** Borealis asked with the tone of a smartassed teenager. In Organoid terms, he really was one.   
  
"Because any of them would splatter this little pathetic wretch like the vermin he is," Riese snorted, and Bill only rolled his eyes before speaking again.   
  
"Right, whatever. Can we just get on with whatever reason you two brought me here, or should I **walk** home?" He asked annoyedly, finally returning the glares that the older woman was giving him.   
  
"As much as I abhor him, he`s right," Riese said as agreeingly as a bull in a china shop, glancing back over to Borealis with eternally furrowed brows and green eyes that were possessed of a permanently **bad** mood.   
  
** So much for dramatic tension. Spoilsports.**_]   
  
"It won`t be pretty when we have to fight it," he concluded blandly. Stating the obvious could only be done in so many ways, after all.   
  
** [**_Before either of the other two occupants of the ancient chamber could even begin to voice a retort, the Organoid threw its head back and exploded with energy. Electricity shocked and arced from every single black line between its panels, tinting from blue to red to white and back again. Glass that had withstood the tests of time shattered at random, timed almost perfectly with a horrendous shriek that was scarcely recognizable as that of something other than a Demon, let alone a mere Organoid.   
  
Bill shrank back, turning broadside and seeking to shield his eyes, but Riese was completely unmoved. Her eyes narrowed a bit more, her still shortly kept blue hair rustled this way and that, but her body had less movement than a statue. Miles away, several Zoids churned to life and died instantly, suffering not from a command system freeze, but from core death itself - all of them fossilized within seconds, their energy shooting up into the night sky in pillars of hot white light.   
  
Within seconds, that same light arced long and gracefully, curling down towards the ground and exploding towards the only remaining entrance into the ancient facility, buried as it was from rubble and debris.   
  
If Riese had been able to stomach the first show, even she had to shield her eyes and lower her head for the second, as metal screamed in protest and dozens of Micro Sworders that lined the entrance of the underground facility overloaded and exploded in droves, all from only being in scarce proximity to the incoming souls of the dead Zoids.   
  
Those same souls shredded through the formerly closed, Gustav-sized door into the chamber, howling even louder than Borealis as they streaked in towards the pool. Liquid churned and boiled, long forgotten panels exploded and Bill felt the tips of his hair singing from a sudden increase in the chamber`s temperature, but it still continued.   
  
More and more sacrificial energy shot into the pool, many of the bolts seeming to pause reverently to orbit around the Organoid that had summoned them, but all eventually finding their way beneath the surface. Within seconds, Borealis himself finished his insane plea for help and ceased to exist with any definition. By the time that Bill and Riese both managed to catch a glimpse of him, the Organoid`s features were a blur of contrasting energies, blue and red seperated sharply by lines of black, all of it outlined thinly with a white aura.   
  
There was a sound akin to a gunshot, the creature had formed into a bolt of multi-colored energy and flashed straight up, coalescing into an almost perfect sphere before blazing right back down at an angle. The already churning liquid exploded outright, as if shot with a cannon, and steam flared up towards the ceiling.   
  
Finally, **finally**, Bill had the presence of mind to speak.   
  
"**WHAT THE HELL DID HE JUST DO?!**" He screamed in shock, unable to believe what his senses were telling him. He could even **smell** the stench of evaporating core fluids.   
  
"You wouldn`t believe me if I told you!" Riese yelled back, her ears still ringing so loudly that she couldn`t even hear his words as more than a whisper.   
  
Seconds passed, and while Riese had already gotten herself calmed down to her usual state of annoyed apathy, Bill`s heart was still skipping beats like an out of shape marathon runner. The liquids in the tank had come to ease back down into something resembling inactivity by now, small waves still shocked in circles upon the water`s surface, its glow had almost dimmed completely, but **something** remained.   
  
Blue optics burned, the raw intensity of their fierce glow defining itself from the rest of what little light remained in the tank.   
  
"What is **that**?" Bill almost yelped as the water again began to shift this way and that, a noticable bulge forming as something began to force up from the bottom of the tank.   
  
"Your new partner..."   
  
The liquid finally **exploded **into a veritable tidal wave, as if a depth charge had been set off at the bottom of the tank. The chamber was briefly set aglow once more as an imposing, heavily shadowed figure, saurian in nature but far larger than Borealis had been, emerged from within, flames tearing from the back of either leg and the sole of each foot as a Zoid of incredible power prepared to walk the face of Zi for the first time since the Death Stinger had been let loose upon humanity.   
  
Metal clanged soullessly against metal, Bill took another step back but Riese was still unmoving.   
  
As breath taking and as dangerous now as it was over two hundred years ago, the Zoid stood before them, rebirthed to fight again - awakened to a new age, and with a new purpose._**]**   
  
"Wake me up when we get there," Bill ordered as he started to lay back further into the cockpit. His stomach let out a groan of protest, but he ignored it, just as he`d been able to ignore virtually everything lately. It would only be a half an hour, but the nap would still do him at least a bit of good.   
  
** [**_"The Geno Saurer."_**]**   
  
Maybe there would even be someone there to greet him?   
  
  
_ "My god..."   
  
_ It was a simple thought, conveying surprise, perhaps even disgust. The shock was practically stamped across his naturally tanned face with enough impact that one could almost see the hairs on his head all moving to stand straight up and back from it all. The smell alone was unpleasant to say the least, a mixture of dirt, grime, perhaps a small bit of urine, bodily gasses and soot. The sounds were equally unpleasant, ranging from hiccuping sobs to childish sniffling to almost deathly grave breathing.   
  
The sight, however, was what held the most impact. The hopeless looks of reverence and malice somehow woven together, the blood drying into clothing and the sorrow laced into virtually every expressions. It was as if someone had taken every single bit of order from their lives and shattered it with enough raw hatred that the sheer _shock _of it all had left them numbed to all reality but whatever was directly in front of them. No one offered comfort, but people clung to each other to try and find it anyway. Men, women, children who should`ve never seen the horrors of the night, they all tried to find some way to keep it together.   
  
A few lost souls were even chuckling, empty as it sounded. It was the laugh of those who were condemned to die.   
  
In all of his life, even through the mental rigors that had been thrown at him by his deceased alter ego at Riven and his own atrocities against the Fatalistic Renegade and its defensive _fleet _of Zoids and pilots, Jamie Hameros had _never _come as close to seeing the effects of war - _real war_ - as he was now.   
  
If anything, it was as if someone had dropped a refugee camp right in his lap. In truth, that`s almost exactly what had happened.   
  
"Now do you see why I don`t think any of these people stole Hunter`s gun?" Pierce asked, snuffing out what was left of her cigarette in the tray and glancing over at the teen standing beside her with his jaw practically unhinged.   
  
"I... I had no idea," Jamie mumbled out after a few seconds of delay.   
  
"This is _all_ that`s left of Farentown`s million-plus population. Getting the picture yet?" She asked again, perhaps a bit offensively this time. Even then though, she still seemed so numb that it was a wonder she even bothered paying attention to the horrific reality that the two were standing in. Dozens of brutalized refugees lined either wall.   
  
"Still think it`s impossible, _Wild Eagle_?"   
  
If Jamie had a retort, it caught itself in his throat and didn`t get the chance to finish forming. A sudden interruption from his right side halted that.   
  
"Is that you?" A voice asked from the side in question, a scraggly, dirty hand reaching out to grip Jamie by the wrist. Almost instantly, he felt the urge to recoil in disgust and pity, but the grasp of whoever was next to him was far too much for that. His balance temporarily faltered as he was used for leverage by whoever had been sitting to his side, and after a moment, a man about the same height as Pierce had straightened up as best he could.   
  
His face, along with the rest of what skin could be seen, was covered in soot, as if he`d been working in a coal mine for days. His hair was kept about neck length, its color hard to determine since the same grime that marred his skin was obviously clumped into it as well, but it looked naturally black, while his eyes were tinted a dull shade of teal. His build wasn`t that different from Mark`s, but the comparitive lack of height left him a bit stockier.   
  
"Holy shit, it _is_ you!" The man practically yelped in surprise. One of his teeth had been covered with gold, as evidenced by the smile he had on his face.   
  
"Uh..."   
  
"Friend o` your`s?" Pierce asked beneath her breath, sighing as she went to reach for another cigarette. With all the stress she was finally starting to feel, she _needed _it.   
  
"Nobody I recognize," Jamie mumbled out before speaking up again. "Do I know you?" He asked, watching the streaks of hope in the man`s eyes dim slightly, only to brighten back up almost imperceptibly.   
  
"Come on, dude, don`t be so modest! I know a freaking _commando _like you can remember the `Staver who ya helped bust outta jail, can`t ya?" The man asked hopefully.   
  
There was a few moments of quite. Jamie just stood and stared with a vague shake of the head, Pierce lit up another smoke and the man`s hopes began to sway slightly.   
  
"It`s me, _Terry_? Come on, I _know_ you remember me," the newly identified Gustav driver said, practically desperate for any sign of recognition he could get. A few seconds ticked by again, but with them, Hameros` eyes widened slightly, his pupils could almost be seen dilating during that time, but the shock soon wore off to reveal an apologetic, but impassive, expression.   
  
"I remember you," he began, feeling a bit of guilt for what he said next. "But it wasn`t me," he said, dashing Terry`s glint of hope as soon as it had been formed. The grip on his wrist slacked more and more until the Gustav driver`s hand fell away all together, the man lowered his head with a sigh and then shook it.   
  
"That doesn`t make sense, but nevermind it anyway."   
  
With that, he stepped away, eventually sitting down as out of sight as possible. Instantly, Jamie was left with the feeling that he should`ve tried to feed some sort of lie, to raise the spirits of everyone that he could...   
  
But it still would`ve been a lie. Even though he felt guilty for it, his own logic ruled that he`d been correct in doing it in the first place.   
  
"Way to crush people, asshole. I could learn a thing or two on how to mindfuck my ex-boyfriends from you," Pierce commented snidely as the two began to walk again, though neither had any particular location in mind.   
  
"Wouldn`t be the first time," Jamie replied, more to himself than to her. He had killed so many people, through his actions and inactions alike, that, by now, he didn`t feel justified in trying to mount any sort of defense. It wouldn`t have done any good anyway.   
  
  
_ "Firewalls. You tried to lock my brain with **FIREWALLS?!**"   
  
_ An imagined laser fence shattered like glass. The outside world rumbled and groaned, the pain was unbearable.   
  
** [**_"And one other thing, dearest brother..."_**]**   
  
_ "**DID YOU HONESTLY THINK A SIMPLE FIREWALL COULD STOP ME, VILHELM?!**"_   
  
An inhumanly complex mind ripped through miles of fiber and copper, electrons chased from circuit to circuit, thoughts raced at the speed of light and a rage that could no longer be contained in human - or Zoid - body fueled every last movement through the self-contained information super highway.   
  
** [**_"Do you remember that convenient little incident a few days ago? The one that left you the default heir of the corporation?" Vilhelm asked, casually seated on the couch that lay across the floor. The coffee table had broken, bits of glass lodged into his forehead and nose, his arms shook uncontrollably and it was all he could do just to keep breathing. His heart felt as though it would explode at any second, and his legs had gone completely numb.   
  
"... Whuthufuckdidyoudoto... Me?!" Henry managed to gape out somewhere between gulping down air and trying to pry his bleeding face from the glass.   
  
"Oh, let me think... Replaced your medication with various addictive stimulants, bribed your doctors and probation officers, sent all the guards on paid vacation or bought them off, shut down the security cameras... And did I mention that funny little bit about spiking your drink with a toxin designed specifically to induce a temporary paralysis?" Vilhelm asked, idly taking a sip from the wine bottle he`d had in hand for the greater part of the night. The glass for it alone probably cost enough to feed a family of five for a month.   
  
"Sss... Sss..." Henry couldn`t even finish the first letter of the word without trailing off into a hissing sound. It was a wonder that the cocktail of drugs working through his system hadn`t killed him right off the bat by now.   
  
"In short, my beloved big brother... I`m dethroning you. A coup de etat, for lack of a better term," Vilhelm added as casually as if he were giving the weather. Another sip from the wine, he was still unphased by it, or by his own brother`s current state.   
  
"Why?!" Henry managed to wheeze out, finally finding the strength of will and body to lift his head up from the glass. The results were that the cuts around his face promptly split open again, new ones formed across his forehead and temples.   
  
"Just doing my part to right a wrong. No grand, complex reason other than that, to be brutally honest. Disappointed?" Vilhelm asked, finally standing up with an expression of raw ego. It was probably one of the few times in the younger brother`s life that his pride had ever outshined his logic.   
  
"Ghhh..."   
  
"Oh, that`s right... I forgot that you can`t really move around or talk right now. How silly of me," he commented, stepping around the table with the graceless stride of a confident predator. He had nothing to fear from Henry, the older brother was having to fight just to breathe, he couldn`t`ve attacked if he wanted to - and he **wanted to**. Badly.   
  
"I suppose what it all boils down to, is that there was a bit of a grave injustice. Scum should always be mindful of their place at the bottom of the food chain and, well, Mother and Father disagreed."   
  
"Kullyoo..." Henry grit out, his neck faltering enough that his head fell back into the glass. Already weakened, what was left in his path promptly cracked and gave way. It wasn`t dramatic and glorious, like when a hero dives out of a window in an action movie, it was slow, and when it finally did break, jagged edges raked across his cheek, drawing even more blood out.   
  
"Yes, I`m sure you`d love to. But for now, and forever, in all likelihood, all you really can, and should, do..."   
  
There was a pause, soon ended harshly as pain cracked through Henry`s body. His voice tore out in a gag of protest, legs slipped and the wood and glass of the coffee table finally, fully gave way, crashing him face first against the floor with Vilhelm`s loafer-clad shoe ground into the back of his neck. A few seconds ticked by, the younger Rommel drew his foot away and a trickle of wine could be felt across the back of the older sibling`s head.   
  
"Mind your place in the food chain, dog."_**]**   
  
_ "... Make the hurting **STOP!!!**"   
  
_ **[**_Glass broke. Vilhelm had tossed the now emptied bottle aside before turning away, his expression seeming permanently victorious, perhaps even smug to an extreme that Henry would`ve only been able to comprehend if he weren`t in such dire shape.   
  
"As it stands though, Henry... I and an... Associate, of mine, have plans for you. If you survive, you may actually prove useful to us in the long run," the younger brother commented as several men in finely tailored suits stepped into the room, accompanied, in turn, by the appearance of something inhuman.   
  
In every way, it stood out. Dark, metallic-green skin - maybe it was plating? - flexed and released with every movement of a long, narrow tail. The creature`s legs were those of a raptor or dragon, finely balanced and geared towards speed and agility, with short but dangerously clawed arms. Its head was equally slender, easily blending to the rest of the body, if not for the disturbingly vivid gold eyes that slit themselves into existence on its face, just above and behind the snout. Finely sharpened teeth, the kind that could reave the flesh from a man`s arm in one pass, lined its jaw.   
  
I take it things went as you had wanted, yes? A voice rang. Henry, in his drugged state, couldn`t even tell if it was a hallucination or not since none of the men who were now starting to scrape him from the floor even noticed it. Only Vilhelm seemed to be paying attention, and though his expression was still as smug as it had been moments earlier, the ego had dropped from it like a stone.   
  
"Yes. I take it you want me to fullfill my part of the bargain now?" He asked, dead serious in every sense of the word as those dark purple, almost black eyes that had been his trademark since childhood narrowed by several fractions of an inch.   
  
Perceptive as ever.   
  
"Whabahgin?" Henry sputtered out as they began to carry him away, his head hanging limply. The last sight he was treated to was his brother standing across from the creature, posture rigid, hands clenched to fists at his sides. He passed out before he could make out anything else._**]**   
  
The last firewall met with every single electron of raw hatred and anger that screamed through the Hellwalker`s mind. Against any ordinary hacker, it would`ve been like an insurmountable, purely defensive juggernaut, able to withstand any possible attack, from worms to trojans to overly sophisticated frequency cracking without even the slightest of compromises.   
  
Against what little coherent thoughts that remained of Henry Rommel, it was about as effective as a thin sheet of tin foil trying to hold back a crashing freight train.   
  
Programming broke under the strain, the Hellwalker`s equivelent to a command system crashed, its combat system wasn`t too far behind. In a matter of nanoseconds though, the work was completed and the slate consisting of the colossal Demon`s controls, for everything from the most basic of gears to the most complex of sensors, had been wiped completely clean. All that was left was a blank field of zeroes and ones, eerily coming into an outline that only vaguely looked human.   
  
_ "Vilhelm?"   
  
_ The figure sparked with static, a recording began to play through what was left of the Hellwalker`s sanity.   
  
_ |Well, I can`t say I`m particularly **pleased** with you, Henry... If you`re seeing this message, it probably means something went terribly wrong. While I can`t say I`m all that thrilled that you must have failed...|   
  
"Fuck you,"_ Henry`s mind blurted out at the recording. Vilhelm probably would`ve only rolled his eyes dismissively, if he had actually seen what was going on.   
  
_ |I can also say I`m not very displeased either. I... Well, no, I don`t really hate to admit it. Either way, you were meant to be destroyed from the start, either by me at a later date, by withdrawls or even by whatever target you`ve failed at eliminating properly.|   
  
_ There was a pause. To the outside world, if anyone had survived close enough to see it, the Hellwalker`s lower jaw had begun to sag.   
  
_ |Regardless of that, you`re still my brother - a shame I couldn`t pick my siblings, but you know how it goes, don`t you? - and that means it`s still my job to... Help you. Make no mistake about it, Henry, I`m still probably going to end up playing some part in your demise, if you don`t fail again, but for the time being, I`m going to walk you through how to program this body of yours in whatever way you want.|   
  
_ Another brief pause. The Hellwalker`s optics, or at least it`s surviving one, flared up slightly in the twilight of morning, bringing a vague light in the smoke of the massacre that had burned all night long.   
  
_ |Never let it be said that I didn`t do **anything **for you, right?|_ The message asked, only to continue less than a thousandth of a second later. _|Now then, let`s begin...|_   
  
  
A deep, relieved sigh echoed through the hangar. Slowly, tiredly, Marcus Harlock took a step back from his fully completed handiwork and let the mostly emptied blow torch fall from his grasp, the safety automatically kicking on as the tool bounced from the snout of the Shadow Fox and landed somewhere on the hangar floor. The sigh gave way to a yawn as the man tugged his gloves off, followed by the welding mask that had been obscuring his face for the past hour or two.   
  
"Finished," he said with no small amount of pride at his achievement. That said, however, he wasn`t above losing his balance and flopping back off of the Shadow Fox`s nose, crashing rear first into the cockpit chair with enough force that his baseball cap almost jarred off, while his mask and gloves were both left to drop where they would.   
  
His surroundings shifted this way and that, the Fox took a few steps straight back and then dipped forward, lowering its head to the ground with a synthesized growl. The cockpit tilted from side to side, Mark groaned and tried to avoid moving his arms and legs from where they were - feet dangling out of either side of the cockpit, arms hanging limply to either side.   
  
"Do I have to?" He complained. The response was a steeper tilt to the side. "Blah."   
  
A few seconds ticked by before the haggard looking pilot climbed back out, carrying his gloves and mask with him before dropping both to the floor and undoing the thick leather apron he`d been wearing. Soon enough, it too had been cast down to the polished metal beneath his feet, just as the Shadow Fox straightened up and let out another growl. An errant spark lit off from the wound still blatantly displayed on the side of the Zoid`s neck.   
  
"Eh?"   
  
Before the Fox could reply, the sound of jet engines dying and a fist pounding loudly upon the main door abruptly signalled the end of the odd conversation. Whoever was knocking was doing it loud enough that it was audible even through Mark`s slightly shoddy-but-effective repair job.   
  
"If it`s a bandit, kill the bastard," he ordered to the Zoid, which promptly shut its cockpit, optics glowing a bit brighter than before.   
  
From there, it took all of ten seconds for Harlock to straighten his hat, then make it to the human-sized front door next to the one used for Zoids, requiring another second and a half to unlock and open it. With that out of the way, he took a step outside-   
  
"... Shit."   
  
- and almost instantly wished he _hadn`t_.   
  
"Hn. I was expecting you to just open the main door, my friend isn`t exactly small enough to take that one," a man commented, though Mark barely even noticed him for the time being. His eyes were, more or less, focused on the forty foot tall death machine that was standing behind the visitor, its cockpit extended all the way down to the ground and small whisps of steam still drifting away from its legs and the boosters on its back.   
  
It was a Geno Breaker. A blue one with a menacing air to it that would`ve probably done the first one a great deal of pride.   
  
"Jesus _Christ_, man... _First _Farentown, _then _Kyle, _now this_?! Death and poverty must like me so much, they`ve brought _friends_!" Mark whined out like a bitchy teenager, just hanging his head, slamming a clinched fist into the doorframe and waiting to be vaporized at this point. Even quasi-lunatics had their breaking points, having a Geno Breaker and a guy with _neon blue eyes _show up on your doorstep after the night that Mark had gone through?   
  
It was a real wonder why he didn`t just _shoot himself_ and get it all over with by now.   
  
"I`m guessing you`ve had to deal with it, then?" The man asked, not even bothering to introduce himself as the Breaker retracted its cockpit. Before Mark could answer, the guy had ducked by him and gone inside, somehow working the controls to open only one half of the hangar`s two main doors, giving just enough space for the Breaker to come inside without tearing through anything.   
  
And when it walked in, it did so like it _owned _the place. The Storm Sworder roused only slightly at the sight of the beast that had virtually crippled it, giving an indignant squawk before going back into the Zoid equivelent of a deep sleep. The Shadow Fox took several steps back, while the Blade Liger remained unconscious and the Raynos stood its ground, completely impassive to the newcomer.   
  
"... Yanno, one of these days, something _normal _is going to happen to me," Mark spat, having stood rooted to the ground during this process. At that, he finally turned and stepped back inside, glancing around for a second before finding where the other man was standing, right at the control console without much of a care in the world.   
  
"Have anything that`d cut industrial strength circuit protectors and elastic?" He asked, finally paying enough attention to Mark that he would`ve given him the time of day. If he had ever bothered looking at it.   
  
"... I got a blowtorch," Mark shrugged. "Who the hell are you anyway? And how did you get _that_?" He asked, thumbing over his shoulder at where the Geno Breaker had practically laid claim to just about every empty spot in the hangar. The Shadow Fox wasn`t even going near it.   
  
"Call me Bill, and I seriously _doubt _a blowtorch is gonna be useful for cutting _this_," he answered, using one gloved fingertip to tug the black collar still tightly coiled about his neck, so much so that red marks could be seen now that it was pulled back.   
  
"Ah. Scissors or a knife`d get that. What about that thing though?" Mark asked once again, mirroring his earlier gesture and again thumbing at the Breaker.   
  
"Long story. Assuming we survive, I`ll tell you sometime," Bill answered casually, letting the control collar pop back into place. The sound alone would`ve made most people wince, but Mark was utterly unphased. "Know where the shower is? I`d _really _like to take one... And get some food, I haven`t eaten in a week... Oh, and I`d also like to get this collar off my neck soon, it has a bomb in it. And a tazer too, but that`s beside the point - and we`ve got company in five seconds. Maybe the blowtorch _would_ be a better choice..."   
  
Pause.   
  
"What the fuck are you, anyway?" Mark blurted out with an expression that had a big fat trio of letters, W, T and F, hung out over his head as if on a gigantic neon sign. Conveniently enough, a three ounce sweat drop somehow appeared on his temple and rolled down to the floor with a plop.   
  
  
Harry Champ, age seventeen - going on eighteen sometime within the next three or four months, youngest of six children, current head and former heir-apparent to the Champ Corporation.   
  
"Are you sure we should do this?"   
  
"Yes."   
  
At present, Harry Champ was sprawled out on his fold-out couch, one leg dangling off the edge, the other bent at a seemingly impossible angle and both arms flung out at random, his head resting in a lopsided position with a bit of drool trailing down his mouth. It was accompanied by deep, relaxed snoring.   
  
"Don`t they have conventions outlawing this sort of thing?"   
  
"Yes, yes they do. We`re about to break them."   
  
He was having some of the best sleep of his life...   
  
"I can`t help but feel a little guilty, anyway..."   
  
"Guilt will be fleeting. You`re a big sister, it`s your _job _to do this."   
  
Complete with fairies, pixies, moonwalking polkadotted Iron Kongs, skewered Liger Zeros and about seventy-two versions of Leena Tauros in various states of undress, not to mention the endless repeat of Bit Cloud falling off the edge of a cliff and landing with this _really _funky splattering sound.   
  
At least, he _had _been having some of the best sleep of his life.   
  
"Well, here goes then!"   
  
And then about two gallons` worth of ice water splashed across him, most of it geared towards his head, chest and stomach, a bit finding lower regions and the armpits as well.   
  
"**_AHHHHH!!!_**"   
  
Bullet-proof glass windows cracked, the fortress rattled about quite violently, a certain pinkish-red haired Zoid pilot let out a completely _cracked _smirk and a calm, collected older sister let out a sigh of relief as Harry flew out of his makeshift bed, crashed facefirst into the ceiling and then fell back down, his body somehow ending up contorted and tucked away inside the couch with only his legs dangling up in the air a few moments later.   
  
"Toldja it`d be fleeting," Leena pointed out, watching her boyfriend twitch and let out muffled complaints from his awkward position. If Harry wasn`t somehow lucky enough to have real life character shielding when it came to being picked on by the gods of Zi, he probably would`ve been dead by now. If he could think properly, he probably would`ve wanted to be.   
  
"Nice to have a return to some degree of normalcy, isn`t it?" Marry asked casually, tossing the empty bucket, which had once held a gallon or so of ice water, over her shoulder. "I used to wake him up like this _all the time _when we were younger..."   
  
Leena was smug and a bit indifferent, tossing her own bucket aside before nodding towards the door.   
  
"I`m gonna give the Prince a nice, sloppy make-up kiss. You might want to run right about now," she pointed out, cracking her knuckles and then reaching up to remove her glasses. Marry only barely managed to avoid turning green at the thought, twirling towards the door on the ball of one ankle. "Oh, and one more thing..."   
  
"Hm?" The blonde asked, tilting back around to get a glance at the other girl.   
  
"Go for the Dark Horn. It`d suit you better," Leena replied, working her fingers in between the cushions and getting ready to pull, her glasses now dangling from the collar of her shirt. Even with the scars, she looked like she was about to successfully imitate some kind of dreamgirl. In truth, that`s just what she intended to do.   
  
"Ah... Right. I`ll think about that if I pilot anything, tell him I said good morning," Marry said back, already to the door. Quickly and precisely, she opened it, stepped outside, reached back in to flip the lock and slammed it shut.   
  
A few seconds passed.   
  
A few more.   
  
Screaming.   
  
The screams died down and something akin to a whistful sigh sounded out, _just _loudly enough to be heard in the hallway.   
  
_ "If it didn`t make me feel sick, I`d probably be laughing right about now," _Marry thought to herself, dusting off her dress and then turning to go find her way back to her own bedroom. If she was going to be helping out wherever she could, she`d need the right clothing, and there was that old jumpsuit she never wore...   
  
  
** [**_A woman and a boy stepped into the hangar, the doors sliding open and shut for them within a split second. The two contrasted greatly in more than a few ways, the woman walked with confidence, seemed passingly older than Marcus and Bill and had hair greener than the grass back at Chapman`s hometown, while the boy walked only barely in her shadow, and looked to be the same age as Jeffrey Halsworth had been - prior to being vaporized, of course.   
  
"Yo, newb... Ie... **WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING DOING HERE?!**"   
  
Confidence seemed to drop like a rock from a Hammerhead, the woman`s jaw looked completely unhinged. The teen, by contrast, was virtually unphased.   
  
"You know this Zoid?"   
  
"It`s the same Geno Breaker that crippled her Storm Sworder, and I`m it`s pilot," Bill interjected, loudly enough to be heard all the way across the hangar. His Zoid proudly glared over over at the downed Sworder, tilting its head arrogantly and then going back into neutral.   
  
"Bit?" The teen asked, blinking for a second before speaking up. "That you, Bit?"   
  
"Bill Chapman."_**]**   
  
The water had felt good. In a way, it didn`t just help cleanse the ounces of grease and whatever else had collected on him since his abduction, it also seemed to help wash away some of the stains on his very soul. Amazing what a good shower could do.   
  
** [**_The rest of the conversation went by quickly. A few threats, a dozen prodding questions and at the end of it, the four stood in a semi-circle halfway between the Gustavs, the Breaker and the Fox. Talk of past battles soon gave way to talk of the one that undoubtedly hung over the heads of all four of them.   
  
"Can you describe it to me?" Bill asked, tucking his hands into his pockets and glancing over the faces of the other three. It was obvious, from their expressions alone, that each was still dealing with their own conflicts. First and foremost, Pierce definately didn`t trust him. He didn`t blame her. Hameros didn`t seem to care either way, he was too absorbed in thoughts of his own, but Mark?   
  
Mark, for once in his life, appeared to be the only one with his mind set solely on the matter at hand.   
  
"A demon outta Hell. Beck called it the Hellwalker, it seems like some kind of inbred bastard lovechild spawned from an Ultrasaurus and the Death Saurer - complete with a CPC o` doom and an attitude to match," he explained with little of his normal lightheartedness, if any at all. "I honestly don`t know how the hell **any **of us walked away from fighting it, I just know it murdered close to a million or more people in just an hour or two, tops."   
  
Jamie was the only one to show a visible reaction to it - he winced. Pierce merely glanced off to the side with a vague sneer, and Bill sighed under his breath.   
  
"We`re gonna need a plan if we`re supposed to fight that thing," Hameros pointed out semi-reflexively. "One that everyone will actually **follow **so we don`t all get **killed**."   
  
"I don`t think it`s possible to take that thing out without being killed anyway. **Beck **couldn`t even do it and **he** was the best pilot since Fleiheit, Schubaltz and Raven," Mark shot off in reply, almost instantly dashing the brief streak of bravery that had shown up in Jamie`s eyes. "Strategy or no, if we go in to fight that thing, we don`t go in to win - we go to make sure it **loses**."   
  
It was a statement that everyone understood almost instantly. Going in for the sole purpose of taking out an enemy meant that the odds of survival, already low enough as is, would go down even further.   
  
"I don`t even have a Zoid handy, **he** shot the Sworder down and my Zabat`s gone to Hell in a handbasket," Pierce commented, glaring over at Bill. He was as indifferent as could be.   
  
"I can have it fixed in a minute," he pointed out, not bothering to explain.   
  
"Do we have any data on it? Any idea what its weaknesses might be?" Jamie asked, cutting the other two off from exchanging anymore cutdowns than they already were.   
  
"The Fox probably has recorded data in its memory banks, you can check those if you want. I`d suggest the Liger, but..." He thumbed over at the haggard, comatose Zoid, the holes, cracks, breaks and burn marks all over it standing out just a bit more as he did so.   
  
"I doubt I could even turn that thing on without an overhaul, let alone pull anything out of its memory," Jamie blandly replied.   
  
"I can fix that t-" "**Don`t**," Mark cut him off with a serious tone. "Whatever you`re capable of, don`t fix that Zoid. You may be able to put it back in the fight, but it`s pilot ain`t in **any **shape to be out of a hospital bed, let alone in a cockpit."   
  
"Then what`s the worry?" Bill asked skeptically, one brow arched and both neon blue eyes leering to the Fox pilot.   
  
"Because the pilot`s a bigger dumbass than me when it comes to minding his own injuries. Good as he is, he`d probably just rupture something in battle and get himself killed, working Liger or no," Mark explained, meaning every word of it with more than a passing hint of respect.   
  
"Right... We`ll need to get more firepower somehow though," Bill stated, pointing out the obvious to a crowd of faces that had 'No shit, Sherlock' stamped on them.   
  
"The only spare guns we`ve got are my old Pteras` Bomber Unit and the Command Wolf`s 150-Rifle," Jamie replied almost instantly.   
  
"Where are they? That Raynos looks like it could handle them with a bit of work..."****_]   
  
The sounds of hair being cut hadn`t taken too long after the shower. It had gotten long enough to reach between his shoulderblades by the time he`d finally been able to take it off, forming into a single lock left lying on the floor in the seconds afterward. The rest of his hair was soon shaped back into the style he preferred it in, oddly mirroring Bit Cloud`s - only shifting to the opposite side and slightly forward instead.   
  
** [**_Soon enough, jaws dropped again. While Jamie had been downloading the Shadow Fox`s combat data into a handheld datapad, Pierce, Mark and Bill had to move the guns into position. Oddly enough, the Raynos cooperated at only a single command from the neon-eyed pilot, stepping near the Geno Breaker and then bending down as the old Command Wolf`s rifle was lowered down until bumping against its back. After that, the Bomber Unit`s leg covers had been brought in, it took the Breaker to set them in place leaned against the Raynos` feet, but it worked.   
  
After that, Mark had mentioned needing to attend to some business of his own and then taken off out of the hangar and down the hall. Nobody had been able to ask why - Pierce was too busy catching her breath, Jamie didn`t care and Bill was focusing on the Raynos.   
  
Slowly and with an odd degree of caution and respect for a machine, the young man set his hands against the Zoid`s leg and spoke up.   
  
"I know these parts probably aren`t really your style, but... We need you to put them on, please."   
  
A few seconds passed by. Pierce grew skeptic, but remained silent, and Jamie thoughtlessly climbed out of the crouching Fox`s cockpit. It was when he looked over at his Zoid out of mild curiosity that it happened.   
  
As if from Bill`s command alone, the Raynos began to actually glow black, whisps of blue passing over it as the aura expanded, the spare parts soon vanishing in blurs of light, along with the Zoid itself. The other beasts that still stood in the hangar held their ground as if expecting the light show, but the other two pilots were both barely able to do more than stand there and look stupid.   
  
Within seconds, it was over. The light faded, Bill took a step back and the old Jamie seemed to return in spades.   
  
"**AWESOME!**"   
  
If Pierce were in her normal state of mind, she probably would`ve made a snide comment or two about Jamie Hameros being a Raynos fanboy. She would`ve been right too, considering the way he was practically snuggling the Zoid`s right leg and coming a step shy of making out with it the instant after he`d shrieked like a girl and sprinted across the hangar.   
  
He had reasons though, the Raynos had been altered severely. It`s colors remained the same, but it now held a few extra toys, so to speak. The 150mm Long Range Rifle, along with its two rarely used 50mm secondary cannons, formerly used by Brad Hunter`s long dead Command Wolf was now fused to the Zoid`s back, melding seemlessly with the Raynos` former main thruster and the sensory dome that had originally been on its back. Two more thrusters had appeared as well, one at the rear of the base of each wing, with a third, far smaller thruster situated in the Raynos` collar. In addition, the Bomber Unit`s shin coverings were now fused into the Zoid`s legs, and had turned the proper shade of green as well.   
  
"How the **Hell**?!"   
  
"It`s like a kid trying to get a mom or dad to buy a toy. Just gotta know how to persuade `em," Bill pointed out, taking another step back, then a deep breath. His eyes looked a little dim for a few seconds, but they soon brightened back up - literally. "One down, now to fix your Sworder and the Shadow Fox."   
  
"... Right," Pierce muttered in disbelief, finally looking over at Jamie. "Hey Fanboy, let`s go make a gameplan."   
  
The teen ground to a halt on the Raynos` leg. Literally.   
  
Then he calmly stepped back down off of its foot and onto the floor, picked the datapad up and gave a nod, not even questioning **why** Pierce wanted to help formulate any sort of strategy since she didn`t seem to be the type at all.   
  
Bill paid them no mind as he approached the Storm Sworder, climbing onto its trailer and stepping over towards its head. The Zoid faintly tried to squawk at him, but now lacked the strength to do even that.   
  
"Shhh, calm down. I know we busted you up last time, but we`re on the same side now..."   
  
Slowly and gently, he pressed his hands to the Zoid`s cheek and began the process once again._**]**   
The clothes weren`t his, but they fit perfectly anyway, even the gloves. Bit Cloud and Bill Chapman were the exact same size after all, though now, Bill wagered that if Bit was alive, the blonde was probably in better shape at first glance. Even the other pilot`s boxers fit, though he wasn`t too keen on thinking about that. Instead, he simply got dressed.   
  
A short sleeved black shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans that fit like a perfectly made glove, one of Bit`s three red-and-white leather jackets - the only one that went down to the waist line - and a pair of black-and-white boots, which also fit perfectly. Lastly came the gloves, another pair that had once belonged to Bit Cloud.   
  
_ "I really have to pay that guy back sometime, if he isn`t dead already," _Chapman noted absently, stopping at the mirror to give himself a once over. He hadn`t needed to shave, whereas Bit needed to every few weeks, Bill`s facial hair amounted to peach fuzz that needed to be groomed once a year at most, his head hair grew out instead. It was probably one of the few differences between the two.   
  
** [**_After the Fox had been done, he stopped, taking a small stumble backwards and right into the side of the Geno Breaker`s foot before sliding down to his rump on the floor, elbows automatically braced on his knees. His breathing was a bit ragged, he felt **weak **from having gone so many days without eating, being sustained by his Zoid or not. The fact that he`d had about as much to drink wasn`t a very great thing either.   
  
"First eat, then shower?" He asked. The Breaker let out a sound that seemed as if it **wanted **to be a snort, but couldn`t quite replicate it properly. "Shower first then," he agreed belatedly, hanging his head with a groan.   
  
The Fox had been the easiest of the trio, though it had still been the strangest. Bill could get it to repair with ease, but its mind raced at dozens of times that of the other two, spitting out enough thoughts to prove it - all of them focused around one of three things: Marcus Harlock, which brought a sense of purpose and the Zoid equivelent to joy, Brad Hunter, which brought a sense of doubt and guilt, and something Bill could only identify as 'Diamond' every few seconds.   
  
In the end though, it had also been the only Zoid of the lot that had modified **itself** through him. Emotions ran wild for all of then ten extra seconds it took, Bill was rooted to the floor at the time, but when it was over, the dual impact cannon was gone, while the boosters once placed in its legs had moved, re-positioning around the base of the tail and the back of the laser vulcan gun`s turret, while its teeth now looked as if they`d been re-painted gold. Its ears had also shrunken back down, and Bill had a feeling that the cockpit`s layout had probably changed at least a bit too.   
  
"Weird Zoid," he thought aloud, scratching at the base of his neck with a gloved fingertip before bringing his head up straight.   
  
"You wanted to ask something?" He wondered aloud, glancing from left to right and finding nothing.   
  
"Thank you for not telling them," came a voice from behind, obscured by the profile of the Geno Breaker. Bill was in no hurry to move for a better look anyway.   
  
"Don`t thank me, thank absent mindedness. What`d you want?"   
  
"Your Zoid is unique. I like it. What`s it`s name?"   
  
"It has none. Why?"   
  
"I have a suggestion for it, if you`d like. I intend to pilot it someday anyway."   
  
"What name will you give it then?" He asked slowly, listening only to receeding footsteps towards the door. Out of laziness and his own apathy, he didn`t bother to look.   
  
"Wouldn`t you like to know?"   
  
The door into the hallway slipped open and shut. Chapman was alone with only the Zoids to keep him company now, just as he already had been for so long._**]**   
  
He knew the base`s layout instinctively - it was virtually the same as the Thunder Team`s own base had been prior to its destruction. The only differences were that every turn had been reversed, and for a guy with the shoddy sense of direction that Bill Chapman lived with when it came to indoor areas, that was probably a good thing.   
  
The door slipped open and lead him into the hallway, just in time to see a beaten looking man with silver hair coming to stand outside of the room that Bill guessed to be the Blitz base`s guest room. Neither greeted one another as he turned away, heading back down the hallway and towards the kitchen.   
  
_ "Next stop: A BLT thick enough to tear my stomach open. Then a drink. **Then **the planning room."  
  
_   
The door slid shut with a gasp of air, it was dark enough that he had trouble seeing for a few seconds, bar the night light that was placed near the bed out of sheer necessity. Slowly, and with the full weight of exhaustion forcing his normally broad shoulders into a slump, he made his way across the room almost blindly, finally finding the back of a chair and tugging it up into place. At that, he twisted it around, its back to the bed, and when he sat down, his own back was to the door, legs spread to either side and arms placed on the top of the chair.   
  
His chin came down, planting itself onto his sleeved forearm with a dulled thump. The sleeping figure in front of him twisted slightly, her back to him.   
  
"Y`nno... I must be freakin` pathetic," he began, voice a bit shaken. "Can go for twenty battles in four days, get flung onto the roof of a hotel building by a psycho, pop jokes and survive a Demon, but the only time I can be emotional to you is when you`re asleep..."   
  
The figure, was unmoving, laying on her side comfortably. He noted, a bit absently, that her hair almost matched her skin in the near nonexistent lighting of the room they were in.   
  
"And I can`t even do this with the lights on... But..."   
  
A pause. Go through life cracking jokes about everything from a sprained ankle to almost being killed, never take anything seriously and then lose almost everything in one night - then try to be serious. It wasn`t easy in the slightest.   
  
"I guess that what I`m trying to say is... For the first time I can think of, I`m really scared. Not scared from being dizzy or off my guard like when I took out that crazy fuck during our vacation, but _scared_. I mean... Shit, it feels like my knees should be shakin` right now," he continued, pausing again before taking a deep breath and picking up where he`d left off. "I`m scared because that layer of invincibility is gone. Beck... Harabec fucking _Davids_, the Revered Raptor, hero to God knows how many people, my uncle and a guy I looked up to more than my own _parents_ died last night."   
  
Another pause. He continued again.   
  
"He was like some sort of... Shit, I can`t even put it into words. It was like... Well, when he was around, _nothing _could go wrong. The guy trashed a Geno Saurer without even getting hit - he took out _fifty Zoids_ in half the time it took me and Kyle to down _ten_. He was like the perfect good guy you always wanna see savin` the day in a movie... He had to struggle to get where he was, succeeded and never forgot. Nothing bad is supposed to happen to people like that, right?" He asked.   
  
No answer, only a deeper breath and a bid to snuggle her face a bit further into the pillow.   
  
"I _honestly _thought he`d be around to cover us forever, I guess. Last night, he stopped being there. I think he knew he wasn`t going to come out of it alive, he told me as much when he said... When he said to take care of things. I made him promise me he`d live, but it either wasn`t enough or he was lyin` when he said he would," he explained, that pit that had been lying dormant in his chest all night acting up again. It made breathing a chore, his throat felt sticky.   
  
"And now... Now, I`m afraid I might not make it out alive either. Shit, if _he _couldn`t, what the fuck kinda chance do I have?" He asked again, speaking at an increasingly lowered tone. It wasn`t easy to spill his guts out to _anyone_, even if they were _asleep_. Still, he kept going, if only because he needed to get it out. It was like absolution at a confessional, sans the priest. "And I`m also... _Really _afraid of losing you. I`m not all that worried about dying now... Well, yeah I am, but you get the idea, don`t you?"   
  
No response still. That was probably better than any vocalization could be.   
  
"Afraid I might lose _you_, afraid I might lose Kyle, Pierce... Kat... Al... Everyone. You guys`re almost all I have _left _right now, I don`t even know if Mom and Dad`re alright or not. Shit, I don`t even know how you feel, haven`t been able to get any real time with you like we should`ve had since this crap all hit the fan."   
  
Finally, movement. Not from her, but him, reaching up to set a hand onto his capped head, a few hairs sticking out of the front since it was still being worn backwards. It almost felt like his skull rattled from the motion, but he kept going nonetheless.   
  
"Once they`re all done... Doing whatever, planning and eating and showering and stuff, the four of us`re gonna go back and try to fight it. I don`t know if we`ll win, I don`t even know if I`ll live to see the end of it but... I`m gonna work my ass off. Sucks that Kyle`s too fuckin` busted up to join us, be nice to have someone I could ramble with out there..."   
  
A pause. Then half-hearted snort that sounded like it wanted to be a laugh, followed by a worn down smile as he shut his eyes and corrected himself.   
  
"Then again, maybe it`s better one of us isn`t gonna be out there... If worst comes to worst, you`ll at least have a damn good pilot around to keep the lot o` ya safe... And, I guess this ain`t the kinda shit I can really joke about anymore. I tried to make Beck promise me he`d survive, but he told me to take care of everyone for him."   
  
Another pause, finally, he started to get up, standing with joints that felt almost slowed and achy from exhaustion, stress and labor, but still standing nonetheless.   
  
"I`m gonna try and do that. I don`t know if I`ll pull it off, I do know I won`t be alone out there though. Hameros is good, Pierce is good too, no idea about Bill but he`s got a freakin` _Geno Breaker _so he _has_ to have _some _skill," he said, stepping around the chair and scooting it out of the way, then just standing there and watching her.   
  
"I don`t know if I`ll get to say this again and... _God_, I prob`ly sound like some kinda fuckin` chick flick _nightmare _right now..."   
  
A shake of the head. He continued once again, having to work to get the words out.   
  
"I love you, Abbie. Always have, always will. You`re one of the greatest... Hell, _the_ greatest woman I`ve ever met, and I`m proud to say I lucked the hell out with you," he said, honestly shocked he could manage to speak the words with a straight face and a level voice. At that though, he reached up, pulling his baseball cap off and dropping it down on the pillow, just behind her head.   
  
"I know I probably... Won`t be able to carry it out, but I promise... I _promise _I`ll be back for that. See ya around, and sleep good... You`ve earned it more than anyone else has around here," he finished, and meant every single word of it to the end.   
  
With that complete though, he turned around, heading for the door. It opened automatically with another gasp of air, and an eye aching change in the lighting, though he managed to ignore it enough that he was able to get out into the hallway and recover from it in a matter of seconds. It still kept him from noticing the other visitor, currently leaned painfully onto wall bordering the doorframe.   
  
"Don`t live up to the team name, Newbie."   
  
A jolt, it looked as if his hair stood on end for a few seconds before Marcus Harlock finally turned around, finding himself a few inches above eye level with Kyle Mazemia. Bandaged and banged up as he was, the silver haired pilot, and the literal butt of so many endless jokes, stood there with the look of a hardened leader of men, even if it was only visible in one of his eyes. A white wifebeater and a pair of dark blue hospital pants were the only clothing that the Liger pilot wore, and even in that aspect, the two were a sharp contrast.   
  
"If I have to, I will," Mark replied after a few seconds, utterly serious for once. In that aspect, if nothing else, they matched almost perfectly and complimented each other to a degree that was usually only seen in veterans who could practically intuit each others` actions six steps ahead. There could be no doubt as to who was in charge though. In experience, skill and charisma, Kyle was the better between the two, the leader.   
  
For the first time, Mark was acknowledging it. Not with words, not even with gestures, only expression. They understood each other well enough that that was all they needed.   
  
"Good luck out there," Kyle finally said, straightening up off the wall with a slowed jerk, in no rush to aggrevate his already severe injuries. A lesser man would`ve been bedridden for a week, Mazemia was on his feet after only a few hours at most.   
  
There was only quiet for a few seconds, intense enough that it could swallow someone whole.   
  
And then, Kyle extended an open hand, not even slowing from the pain the gesture caused his shoulder and elbow.   
  
Mark replied in kind, not bothering to shake hands, but instead throwing his arms out and wrapping them around the shorter fellow as if he were a brother. As far as these two were concerned, that`s just what they were - brothers. Different parents, they didn`t look a damn thing alike, but that didn`t matter, and Kyle seconded that notion by returning the gesture in kind, even if he had to bite back a wince to do it.   
  
"Take care man," Mark ordered sternly, finally letting go and taking a step back after several seconds. "If we`re not back by noon, get everyone and haul ass outta here."   
  
Kyle only nodded, replying after a few seconds with another gesture - an extended fist.   
  
Mark lightly punched it twice, once up, then down, then Kyle returned the act. From there, each of the men turned away, Mark heading down the hallway towards the hangar or the planning room, Kyle heading back to the infirmary where he`d left Katherine sleeping only a few minutes earlier.   
  
  
Dawn. Seven-thirty in the morning, to be precise. The early morning sun was only just now to the point that it was halfway visible on the horizon, casting long shadows from virtually anything that stood out against the bleak, uniform landscape of the desert.   
  
** [**_There was a stir in the hallway, fearful yet somehow reverent eyes shifted up in regards to the four figures heading for the hangar. They almost seemed like gods walking among men, none looked dirty and though all of them appeared ragged and war torn in their own ways, none were lessened by it. Those same eyes tracked them, a few voices spoke up but died down, and within a minute, they had vanished from sight as quickly and collectively as they`d appeared._**]**   
  
It had been a sickeningly long night, millions were dead and the only things that stood in their memory were the enormous crater that had once been Farentown, and the lone, statuesque figure of a small Blade Liger, standing gloriously in the desert with his beaten head thrown back in one final, eternal cry of defiance and sorrow.   
  
** [**_The hangar itself was completely void of human life, and only the Zoids themselves stood by, the optics of four of them lighting up one after the other as each pilot filed in. Gloves were tugged and tightened, vests and jackets alike were shrugged into place, zipped, buttoned up or left to hang open as footsteps lead the four apart. Within the span of another minute, each pilot had taken his or her seat in the cockpits. Hydraulics gasped, harnesses were fastened and gutchecks went by in the span of seconds that seemed like individual eternities._**]   
  
** Smoke still blotted out part of the early morning sky, casting its own colossal shadow in the distance, but _something _was still moving. It seemed almost as if Zi itself shook with the passing of each step, one more gigantic figure casting an equally large shadow of its own. The fossilized Blade Liger rattled as it passed by, ignorant of what remained of the small but violently intense battle that had been waged there in the hours before.   
  
** [**_Consoles lit up, viewscreens hummed to life and combat and command systems alike started activating. One by one, the Zoids turned towards the closed hangar doors._**]**   
  
Only the Blitz Team Base, Tauros Farm as it was sometimes known, stood before it, ten or fifteen miles straight ahead, beyond a large rock arch.   
  
The same base`s main doors, one of which was pockmarked from a makeshift repair job, began to open a few seconds after the Demon became visible in the distance. At first, only darkness could be seen inside, dim silhouettes standing out here and there, defined only by the glows of several aerial thrusters warming themselves up.   
  
And then the Zoids began to emerge. First came the Shadow Fox, stepping out into view with what could be best described as a soldier`s stride, serious in every aspect. Its optics glimmered with a mixture of emotions that could only be related to by its pilot and several others.   
  
Then came the Geno Breaker, walking out at a slow pace, menacing in its own way even when it was on the right side for once. Pincers remained undeployed for a matter of moments as it came to stand next to the smaller Shadow Fox, all four blades finally flipping forward and into attack mode from there.   
  
Then came the Storm Sworder, and finally the Raynos. Both of the last Zoids tilted forward, and almost at the same time, began to lift from the ground.   
  
"Whatever happens from here on out, stick to the plan," Mark`s voice echoed over the comm. It was an odd thing to hear coming from him, but it only drove the point him a bit further. "Nobody plays hero when we`re out there, and if the plan doesn`t work..."   
  
There was a pause.   
  
"We improvise," Bill cut in, the Breaker`s hoverjets churning to life and sending it careening forward at full speed. The Shadow Fox followed within a matter of seconds, letting out first a synthesized shriek of a battle cry, then taking off with its own boosters blazing a hot white. For a few moments, the two Zoids were alone, and then their aerial cover caught up.   
  
The Storm Sworder streaked overhead, the Raynos trailing it by only a scant few meters.   
  
As the unlikely team of Oscar Hameros` son, Harabec David`s nephew, Michael Summers` daughter and Bit Cloud`s broken mirror image began its approach, their target began to pick up speed towards them, and the sound of an enraged Ultrasaurus from Hell rippled through the countryside, met only with determined looks and activated weaponry.   
  
Zero hour had come and gone, all that was left now was the endgame...   
  
_

End Chapter Thirty-Four  
  


_

* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Hot damn, ladies and gentlemen... 100k! This is officially the single longest frelling chapter I`ve ever written for anything! O_o!  
  
And it`s also, hopefully, going to be one of, if not **the** only chapters in all of ROC so damn filled with flashbacks o_o; But I needed to fill up some space to keep with the 90-or-more kb rule I set for myself and it`s about that time where I feel I can start dropping the Bombs of Plot-ness.  
  
Also, next chapter will likely be the last one to focus so frelling heavily on the Suicide Crew.  
  
And ROC officially has two chapters left. Be afraid.  
  
**Tilly:** Glad the OCs have come off so well @_@ And also glad that you liked the scene with Leena and Marry. They`re both becoming increasingly easy to write O_o  
  
**Illidan:** Hopefully this at least stayed at the bar level I set with the last one. As for Marry being a secretary-type person... Feh, you think I`d give her the decency of being left alone? Just because she may become a go-between doesn`t mean she`s going to catch a break once the time comes for me to start pulling out all the stops I have left for her... In fact, even if she becomes a secretary-of-sorts, she`ll probably still be pretty important O_o  
  
And what was that about Leena being mature? XD *Cackles.*  
  
Also, since you seem to be a country fan, I advise downloading/buying the Trigun soundtrack. It`s somewhere between country, jazz, a smidge of techno and some rock tossed in as well. Methinks you`d like it.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** It`s not you. The last few chapters **have** been moving slower than most of the story, primarily because I`ve been using them to build up to what I`ve got planned. ROC started with a simple gshot, TOD is going to start with the whirling of a gattling gun.  
  
**Chaotic-Swordsman-Brad:** Wow o_o Someone actually seems to have caught almost everything without me having to point it out to them in some way. Cool.  
  
First off, thanks for all the compliments regarding the series I`ve set up so far. Means a lot to me to know people think that highly of it, and second off: Yes, the Diamond Fox was originally meant to go to Brad. Now, it may end up in the hands of either Leyla or Naomi, I`m still conflicted about it. The Gun Raptor(as Leena renamed it to no truly sane objections) isn`t quite as significant, but it still has a pretty good role to play. Both will probably continue to collect dust for a while longer, Champton isn`t getting the AHBL treatment until a ways into TOD...  
  
And that Demon that took out the Death Saurer was just the King Gojulas. During the Endtimes, there were a specific number of gigantic Demon Zoids tasked from 'birth' to death with hunting and killing other Demons until nothing was left. The King Gojulas was one of them, but it probably won`t be appearing again anytime soon, at least not outside of flashbacks.  
  
As for the Asmodeus?  
  
**_Heh_**...  
  
**Akino Ame:** ... Holy shit O_O! *Hands Akino a cookie or eight for burning through ROC so quickly.* Leyla`s still a bit of a hassle for me to write, but soon enough she`ll break into line with what I have planned for her. Emphasis on break. Leena **has** become pretty likable though, eh? Scarred to Hell and overclocked right back by GigaBeke, she`s got a nice role to play as well...  
  
As for not liking Madison because her story hasn`t been told... It may very well never **be** told, at least not in more than sparse hints. Half the reason I enjoy writing her when I can is because it forces the readers to have to speculate on her origins :p  
  
As for Harabec and Brad... Damn O_o; Just... Damn.  
  
That said, I have... Lessee... At **least** four more casualties planned for the remainder of the trilogy. **Gee**, there`s only four people going up against the Hellwalker...  
  
...  
  
...  
  
Ain`t I a bastard? XD  
  
Oh, and note the heavy Trigun influences. Originally, Zero Hour was supposed to be the song used for the last scene but... War of the Last Wolves just marched right up to my brain and **demanded** to be used instead. Ph33r music, y0 o_o;  
  
And kudos to Zinou for beta reading. *Passes out kudos cookies.*   
  
That`s all for now folks. Merry Christmas, Happy New Years and see ya next time! R&R, enjoy, Sh33p out! 


	35. Endgame

  
  
**Foreword:** To Zinou: I know I said I was gonna toss this to you to beta read and all, but I finished it at 7-something in the morning. And had to post it. Author madness 03nz my soul.  
  
**Soundtrack:**  
  
**Scene One:** Big O - Sin  
**Scene Two:** Big O - The Holy  
**Scene Three:** Metallica - Sad But True  
**Scene Four:** Zoids - Any End of the Land  
**Scene Five:** Godsmack - Awake  
**Scene Six:** Harry Chapin - Cats and the Cradle  
**Scene Seven:** The Matrix - Neodammerung  
**Scene Eight:** GooGoo Dolls - Long Way Down(or AFI - Girl`s Not Grey)  
**Scene Nine:** G Gundam - Intense Battle  
**Scene Ten:** Metallica - Sad But True  
**Scene Eleven:** Hack Sign - To Nowhere  
**Scene Twelve:** Inuyasha - Hanyou Inuyasha/Inuyasha Intro  
**Scene Thirteen:** Linkin Park - Breaking the Habit  
**Scene Fourteen:** Big O - Stand a Chance  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Endgame   
  
  
  


Boosters flared, Mark`s left ear twitched slightly from the sound as the Raynos JT and Storm Sworder both pulled up and to either side, gaining speed in their ascent from the battlefield. The plan had been simple enough, the fighting hadn`t even started yet, but his gut had already tied itself into an absurdly tight knot that threatened to expand all the way to his chest. Cold sweat dribbled across his face and his hands felt clammy and cold against the make of his gloves.   
  
He was tired, hungry, scared as Hell and twice as nervous because of it. In short, he was experiencing the same kind of warping emotions that could make or break a soldier waiting to go into battle. The Hellwalker was approaching - had it gotten faster or was the stress finally starting to get to him? Regardless, with exception to its hump of a back, the manmade Demon approached just beneath his line of sight, obscured greatly by a steep hill that lead to an equally flat plain.   
  
Another howl of thrusters, this time more subdued as the Geno Breaker lifted back off the ground and blew away, strafing to its left for a good hundred or so meters before turning in that direction and continuing along on a wide arc.   
  
_ "Almost go time,"_ he thought to himself, mouth breathing without even realizing it. His knuckles faded white on the Shadow Fox`s controls - they`d changed since he had piloted the thing last. Where before, the cockpit had been set up similarly to a Command Wolf, now it was almost the same as the Liger Zero, barring several key differences in color and style.   
  
_ [400 meters...] _  
  
The message blipped across the main console soundlessly, but his eyes caught it anyway. The scanner was set to start beeping at 275. The ground was starting to shake, he could almost feel it in his bones as the Shadow Fox seemed to tense up on its own, flexing gears and spinning stabilizers and gattling barrels alike before assuming a posture similar to a statue.   
  
_ [300 meters...]   
  
_ The shaking became more pronounced.   
  
_ "I hate radio silence,"_ he gulped back, taking a look up from the scanner to watch a series of energy bolts and a thin hail of missiles careen up towards the clouds in the sky. A mixed sign, it meant that Hellwalker had noticed Hameros and Pierce, but it also meant that it probably hadn`t noticed he and Chapman yet. It also held the hope that the thing was low on missiles after the virtual blitzkrieg it had probably executed to try and get rid of Harabec last night.   
  
The shaking was accompanied by the sound of footsteps now, beeping entered into his ears and his mouth turned from too moist to too dry, the muscles in his throat almost wanted to constrict.   
  
_ [200 meters...]   
  
_ He could see almost nothing of it but its tail now.   
  
"Come on out, you big, fat son of a bitch..."   
  
A howling shriek almost made his ears want to bleed as dust and dirt tore from the front of the hill he was hiding behind, the gun-covered snout of the Hellwalker exploding into view in perfect synch. For a moment, Mark was unable to make out details since the creature`s head moved with too much speed, giving him an ever expanding glimpse of only its neck, and then it finally stopped, ignoring the Zoids in the sky and craning its head to look straight down at him from a mile or more up.   
  
_ [Damage to the Hellwalker`s right eye detected.]   
  
_ This time, there was a beep alerting him to look at the console, which he did in a flash of nervous movement, only to be drawn to look back up at the monster before him as the information registered. His breath caught itself in the back of his throat, eyes widened just barely and he had to crane both his neck, and the Fox`s too, just to get a glimpse of the Hellwalker leering down at him so mightily.   
  
"Hi there," he said finally, knowing he wouldn`t be heard. Tension became unbearable, silence seemed to dominate everything after the roar as even beeping stopped. His words were but a whisper against the amusement the Demon must`ve felt at the sight of a lowly _rat_ standing in its way.   
  
"Let`s put on our classics and have a little dance, shall we?"   
  
The world blurred and the Hellwalker`s head lunged straight down, jaws snapping open. The Shadow Fox replied in kind with a synthesized shriek.   
  
The battle had finally begun.   
  
  
Beams shattered the calm that had formerly reigned several miles up off the soon-to-be battlefield, instinct honed through countless hours of in-flight practice, simulations and actual battle guided Pierce into a series of simplistic, natural turns, dives and twists, banking hard from left to right and varying her speed. Jamie seemed to hold his own just as well, weaving between lethal bolts of plasma as if it were almost a second nature for him.   
  
A warning alarm sounded into her helmet, eyes narrowed and her body reacted before her mind even finished processing what to do. Her engines cut off after a few seconds, the Raynos blasted off its afterburners and fired its forward thruster at the same time, the sudden bursts of heat and energy alike promptly overshadowing the heat and Core signatures of the Storm Sworder.   
  
A swarm of missiles all began to form up into a cluster, set to enter her line of fire in a matter of seconds once the Raynos seemed to almost stall in front of her. The Sworder`s wings tucked in, her finger rested a bit heavily on the trigger for a moment before pulling it. Instantly, the falling Zoid jolted precious inches back as the gattling gun situated in the Storm Sworder`s mouth whirled to life and sprayed some of its deadly payload out.   
  
Engines flared back to life, the silver Zoid hurtled forward again and blades deployed as explosions shredded the numbers of the missiles down to three, all of them still bylining for the semi-stalled Raynos JT before their warheads were neatly severed in one barrel rolling pass. The sonic boom threw them off course and several more blasts echoed through the sky as the Raynos cut its forward thrusters off and again surged ahead, forming up on the Sworder`s wing in a wide arcing turn.   
  
Both Zoids barrelled up and held straight, upside down, for several seconds before radio silence broke.   
  
"I`ve got point," Pierce said.   
  
"Going in," Jamie replied with an odd lack of emotion as the Raynos dropped, pointing straight down for a second before slightly angling his approach. Blue turned white several times, then solid orange and various other desert colors blended into view, finally giving way to the details of the Hellwalker`s frame, its body rumbling while its mile long neck tore back up out of the ground with a howl.   
  
A black speck could be seen darting away frantically.   
  
_ "Thank God for small miracles,"_ Pierce thought to herself, charging up those blades and readying to fire missiles and gattling rounds alike once the Sworder had gotten more towards the Raynos JT`s belly than right behind it.   
  
Too late, the Hellwalker finally noticed the pair of incoming Zoids and also too late, it craned its head to face them. Guns as big as a dozen Gustavs blazed to life, the equivelent to house-sized flack shells poured out into the sky, but Pierce held her shots back.   
  
Jamie didn`t.   
  
The JT barrel rolled through the stream of fire without taking damage, cutting its speed to almost nothing as it stopped at a virtual right angle, then flared forward again, ready to meet the Hellwalker face-to-face. Only now did Pierce notice that the Demon`s right eye had the broken, sparking and slightly melted blade of a Rev Raptor lodged into it, but Jamie was all over it by then.   
  
Pulse lasers and fire from all three of the JT`s back mounted guns hurtled into the Walker`s eye, Hameros closed in and ended his first pass with a sonic boom to the face, climbing back up while Pierce closed in for her own.   
  
Several turrets went flying, gattling rounds shot into the Demon`s eye and a missile followed. The Storm Sworder whirled under the Hellwalker`s neck, plasma bolts following it at every turn before it broke off, arcing wide after the Raynos.   
  
"Did we hurt it?" Jamie asked from above, his voice sounding over the comm almost too blandly to believe that he was in the middle of a fight for his life. Pierce banked to the left and dodged a series of bolts, craning her neck to get a look around while the Sworder slipped ever higher.   
  
The Hellwalker shook its head in disorientation, but remained silent from any expressions of pain.   
  
"I can`t tell," she replied with a voice that sounded close to a growl.   
  
"We`ll know soon enough then, get ready to make another pass - let`s try and take out some more of its guns this time," Jamie ordered. For whatever reason, _he _had taken over the role of leading the attack, designating Mark as the sacrificial lamb who would keep the Walker occupied, then coming up with the tactics that he and Pierce were using now.   
  
"Why not try and take _it_ out?" Pierce questioned for the umpteenth time since the planning room, even as she rode into Hameros` jet stream.   
  
"Because it looks like we don`t have the firepower. That`s where Chapman comes in."   
  
  
_ "Shit,"_ he thought as the explosions rattled across the Hellwalker`s face, smoke tearing away in the aftermath of a sonic shockwave. The great beast`s head lumbered slowly to the side, a thunderous growl issuing from its sharply toothed mouth - one that could be _felt_ as much as it could be heard. Counterattacks followed the two aerial Zoids, it was all he could do to try and keep his stomach from doing flops and twists from disbelief.   
  
There were scratches, burn marks and part of the broken blade lodged in its eye had been melted, but for the most part, no damage had been done.   
  
"We`re alike, you know," he finally voiced out, shifting slightly to watch as the Shadow Fox tried to draw the Walker`s attention with a stream of pulse lasers, raking hard across the Demon`s throat. It did little more than damage a few turrets and leave a trail of black pock marks across the Zoid`s mile long neck.   
  
An orange optic focused, the tail began to come about and he was immediately drawn back from the already obscured view of Harlock`s Zoid. The Breaker`s presence tensed in mind and jump jet engines churned, waiting for the cue.   
  
He`d been noticed. No point in hiding now.   
  
"But I`m not the same as you."   
  
The batteries of guns on the tip of the Hellwalker`s tail locked into place on the Geno Breaker, even through the obstructions of the terrain between them. Turrets lining the Demon`s neck, body and tail soon followed, but its head refused to turn fully, which in turn left only one eye to regard the smaller Zoid, an eye which now glowed like a fire from Hell.   
  
"Unlike me..."   
  
It came down to fractions of seconds as the guns started firing - the hill between the two turned into a charred, glassed memory by the time it was over, but the attack had been faulty. The Geno Breaker shredded through the smoke in a rocket jump, flying through the air and into view with seeming impunity to the virtual wall of firepower being directed at it, mouth open, tail straight.   
  
"You`ve lost your conscience," Bill Chapman pointed out at last, firing the charged particle cannon and feeling his Zoid threaten to fly back from the recoil. The beam, solid white lined with frantic strings of violet and blue lightning, ripped through the distance between the two combatants, striking into the Hellwalker`s side and snapping down across it, leaving armor to turn into molten slag or explode outright.   
  
The cannon cut off, the Breaker flipped over into a barrel roll and weaved through fire to the ground, landing in a crouch and leaping forward. Dirt turned to flying shards of glass, engines blasted back on and the Zoid became a blur, streaking in with leg guns blazing. The Hellwalker replied in kind, shrieking its war cry and turning to face the incoming Geno, each step causing the ground to shake in every direction.   
  
Explosions tore across one knee, the Breaker swerved to the side and the Shadow Fox came back into view, slipping to a halt and firing its only gun up into the front of one of the Walker`s hips.   
  
"I can`t get a response from it, it`s like the god damn nerves`ve been shut off," Harlock`s voice rang out, putting an end to radio silence on the ground. It had served only to hide Bill, and with him exposed, it no longer had any use.   
  
"Keep trying," Bill replied tersely, again swerving to avoid being turned into a molten crater by the guns that could reach beneath the Hellwalker`s legs, legs that now seemed to move with a new liveliness that hadn`t been in any of the files in the Shadow Fox`s data, limited as it may have been.   
  
"Pierce and Jamie should be making another pass soon, try and keep it focused on us," Mark ordered, the claws of the Fox glowing and its vulcan lowering. Bill didn`t need to be told twice, though he couldn`t really comply either, seeing as how he was too busy dodging to actually get any solid attacks off.   
  
  
The esteemed Champ Family Hangar in Champton. In peace time, it served as something that the Champs used to keep their own personal Zoids in, doubling as both a showroom and a maintenence area. At present, it was a structure housing a few Champ family Zoids and about a dozen Zoids that had earned their way in for belonging to a select group of incredibly skilled, _ace _pilots. Leon Tauros` Blade Liger, Naomi Fluegel`s Gun Sniper and others were all being kept here for the time being, along with those few Zoids that anyone in the Champ family actually owned.   
  
Chief among these was the pink Iron Kong Mark II standing at the ready on the farthest side of the hangar, along with the recently recovered Dark Horn HT, the Zoid that she`d come to get. The Zoid had been in the hands of the Backdraft Group right up until the organization had folded under renewed, intensified pressure from just about everyone and their mom, at which point, a few members had saved their own skins by giving away the whereabouts of some rather priceless Zoids.   
  
The hangar itself was close to being empty of people, most of the workers who usually manned it during the day were off having breakfast and showering.   
  
For a few seconds, she paused to take a look around, then almost jumped out of her own boots at the sound of the door automatically slamming shut behind her.   
  
_ "Must not`ve triggered the motion detectors for too long,"_ she thought with a sideways glance, taking several steps forward and looking around. The Zoids were all set into three rows, Harry`s Kong at the farthest wall from her, closest to the front, the Horn in the row behind it and an as yet unseen Zoid occupying the position in the row furthest back.   
  
_ "Hopefully the controls won`t be too hard to figure out,"_ she mused walking onward with a stiff stride. The boots she wore had never been broken in at all, just like everything else she was currently wearing. The hair she usually left to cascade down her back like a waterfall had been put back up into the same ponytail it`d been in when she`d first piloted an Iron Kong, one which had since been handed off to someone else. The clothing she wore was still somewhat uncomfortable, but it was a start.   
  
Pink laced black leather combat boots and a dark gray-blue pilot`s jumpsuit with her name distinctly tagged on the left side of the chest. Plain leather gloves hung out of the pocket on the right side, for all intents and purposes, she looked like any other pilot.   
  
Except that she _wasn`t_. The nametag alone clarified that much. Marry Champ wasn`t exactly known for being the pilot in the group of Champ siblings, more like the peacekeeper. She`d been the one who helped to keep everything together before their parents had died, the go-between, for lack of a better term. Now, she was going to climb into a cockpit for the second of third time and try to prove useful.   
  
Suffice to say, she wasn`t just another pretty rich girl at the moment, she was also a complete bundle of nerves as well. More than anything, she didn`t want to accidentally drive the Dark Horn right into the Iron Kong standing in front of it.   
  
It was somewhere between thinking about the controls, walking down the wrong row and pausing to try and stretch the ankles of her boots that she noticed she wasn`t alone. A man in a black trench coat, gaudy purple shirt worn underneath, brown slacks and a _pink_ tie. With a pointy head that looked like it could double as an anti-Zoid bullet. Staring at whatever Zoid it was standing in the row behind the Dark Horn.   
  
"Hello?" Marry asked finally rousing out of her self-absorbed stupor in time to slow down and avoid slapping into the guy.   
  
"Eh? What do you want?" The man asked with a shrug, his hands in his pockets as he turned to glance her way.   
  
"Nothing, just wondering who else was here. What are you staring at, anyway?"   
  
"Oh. Nothing, just a funny lookin` Shield Liger," he answered, raising a hand up and thumbing in the direction of the Zoid in question. Once Marry got close enough to actually see it, she could easily understand why he`d been staring. It didn`t look that different from any run of the mill Shield Liger, but it was slightly larger, more robust, as if this one were actually _alive_. Colored black with a green cockpit, its claws were golden, its teeth as well. From what Marry could see, aside from size and coloring, it didn`t appear any different from an ordinary Shield Liger, barring the strange sense of boredom that she imagined being projected by it.   
  
"Hm. I think one of my uncles or aunts owned that, don`t see why we never got around to throwing it away or anything," she sighed, finally coming to stand next to the man with a raised brow.   
  
"All I know is that some of the mechanics said it won`t let anyone pilot it anymore, and that they said the last guy who tried to reprogram it with a different personality got ejected into the ceiling and then fell to his death," the man replied. "Mind you all I know is heresay that I got from the few mechanics I`ve actually spoken to..."   
  
"Oh, no. I remember hearing something about that. It was the first work-related fatality in the company`s history, although I can`t remember the specifics," she explained with a shrug, finally turning towards the Dark Horn. "It`s unimportant, really. My name`s Marry Champ, by the way, and you are?"   
  
"Leyon Martin," the man answered without bothering to extend a hand for her to shake, simply continuing to stare at the Shield Liger as if it was going to start _talking_ anytime now.   
  
"... Right. Nice speaking to you," Marry politely said, walking back towards the Dark Horn after a few more seconds. She might`ve been nervous, but at least she wasn`t insane like Leyon seemed to be.   
  
  
Charged particle beams flared as if they were being fired from a machine gun, pulse lasers danced across a mile of solid armoring, missiles and anti-Zoid slugs rained down from above, sonic booms thundered in and Strike Laser Claws dug into cracks and splits like burning splinters.   
  
The Geno Breaker was the only real threat, but the others were proving just enough of a combined annoyance to keep his attention focused at least partially on them. Still, he watched it through one good eye, envisioned it through use of the same sixth sense that had allowed him to home in on Farentown like a bat zooming in on an unprepared insect. He watched with more interest than he gave anyone else, putting the Fox, Raynos and Sworder all on a mental backburner and throwing only token potshots at the three of them.   
  
He saw every move, watching as the Breaker all but danced through his attacks, burning its way between countless beams and bolts, stopping on dimes and bursting straight up, sliding to a complete stop along its feet and jumping into a sideways strafe with its hip guns blazing almost harmlessly across his ankles.   
  
_ "You`re wrong," _he finally thought, his lumbering body jerking with a swiftness that defied its formerly sluggish pace, weight heaving back and to one side as one of his forelegs slung up. _"We`re exactly alike. One and the same."_   
  
Weight shifted again, the Breaker was caught in a shadow and instantly screeched to a halt, only to strafe sideways instantly. There was a split second of delay, during which time, the Hellwalker`s foot continued down like a sledge hammer. The Shadow Fox skidded to a stop and shrieked, its pilot yelled something over the broadband and the Geno suddenly threw its mouth open, bursting out with a charged particle beam and flinging back from the recoil.   
  
The Walker`s foot smashed into the ground, hard packed dirt and sand flew up in a shockwave and the hundreds of thousands of tons of weight in the leg continued downward for no less than eighty feet. Pain finally shot through his senses as the beam kept firing, plowing through first the top layers of armor, then beneath that.   
  
_ "If I was as much of a tool as you are, I wouldn`t just be piloting him," _came the inevitable reply, just as the beam cut off. There were a few moments of silence. The debate paused, the fighting itself seemed to grind to a halt as he turned his massive head on its even more massive neck, arcing across a country mile in a split second and facing the infinitely smaller Zoid with his good eye.   
  
_ "I am not a tool **ANYMORE!**"_ The mind of the Core component once known as Henry Rommel shrieked telepathically, its words underscored by the shocking sting of a column of fire erupting from the point where the Breaker`s particle beam had sliced through his wrist, exploding out several dozen feet before the flames ceased and turned into nothing but a scorched puff of smoke, charred black.   
  
_ "Then why?"   
  
"Because..."   
  
"Because **why**?"   
  
"Because I **can**."   
  
_ Restructured programming kicked back into action, the wrist numbed completely and internal measures designed to prevent further damage from fire or the environment kicked in, causing foam to leak out through the open wound. Slowly but intimidatingly, he tore his foot back from the broken ground beneath and around it, sending off another cloud of smoke.   
  
_ "You really **have **lost your conscience then," _Bill replied in a slow, methodically driven voice, his words ringing through the Hellwalker`s mind.   
  
_ "I`d be lying through my teeth if I said I`d ever even had one," _Henry replied in kind, still ignoring virtually everything else on or above the battlefield. It was a mistake that proved painfully easy to regret.   
  
"**_LOOK AT ME WHEN I`M CUSSING YOU OUT, YOU FAT HONKING SON OF A BITCH!_**"   
  
The words hadn`t really been heard as much as they`d been howled in a rage over almost every short range frequency that the Walker could pay attention to, punctuated with a swift, stinging sensation across the inside of his wrist, just outside of the areas damaged by the Breaker`s particle beam. Almost on cue, the Shadow Fox darted into his field of vision, its gun swinging forward and giving a spin before he felt the sting once again, this time lancing like a short tipped dart across his only working eye.   
  
Vision clouded briefly with hot, red static, the Hellwalker`s head lifted up in pained annoyance, and attentions shifted.   
  
Marcus Harlock had just painted a bull`s eye across his back. What was once Henry Rommel intended to put a bomb through it.   
  
_ "If you`ll excuse me..."   
  
_ The Breaker growled, the Walker began to shift, stomping forward and quickly beginning to gain speed that it simply _had not _had the previous night.   
  
_ "Be my guest,"_ Bill replied smoothly enough, watching three mile long body of the Demon storm away, even as the Geno calmly began to turn of its own accord, only to finally stand still, footlocks slamming into place as the pincers flipped forward, its shield flaring into existence as another message rang through the Hellwalker`s thoughts.   
  
"Whenever you two`re ready."   
  
  
There was a sound of an old fashioned hinged door opening and closing, Leon greeted it with only a backhanded wave of his index finger, speaking up with a quiet tone as his head straightened up. Naomi was still passed out against him, having eventually flopped down with her head and shoulders laying sideways on his lap, facing the windows. Accordingly, her body had shifted up until it was entirely sprawled out across the width of the padded bench they were sitting on.   
  
"Hmph. I`d been hoping to catch you while sleeping," an older voice replied casually as a man in his late thirties or early forties walked around and sat down to Leon`s other side.   
  
"Not happening, Dad. One too many wet fingers jammed in your ear makes you a light sleeper," he replied flatly, staring out at the landing pads and runways with disinterested, dry eyes that were hazed from sleep. Leon was usually only a step above being legally blind whenever he woke up, his eyes were always so try they couldn`t quite focus for a good number of minutes.   
  
"You still remember that?" Steven Tauros asked curiously.   
  
"I`ve only been living away from you and Leena for four or five months now, Dad," Leon Tauros answered with a blunt tone, giving his father a sideways glance with a raised brow for emphasis.   
  
"Not _my_ fault you lost your sense of humor while you were gettin` around," the older man shot back with a similar expression.   
  
"Well... What can I do for you?" Leon finally asked after a few more seconds, both turning back towards the glass as Steve threw his arms up over the the back of the bench and leaned back. Unconsciously, Leon mimicked him with one arm a few moments later.   
  
"Just came to see how you were doing... I can count off the times I`ve seen and heard from you since you left on one hand," Steve replied simply enough, head lulling off to the side. Again, Leon mimicked him, this time in reverse, tilting his head to the opposite side.   
  
"Pretty good actually... Aside from getting my butt stomped in back at Romeo by a blue Geno Breaker."   
  
"... _Shiny_," Steve mumbled, completely missing the point about his son losing the battle and instead trying to visualize something as cool looking as the Zoid he`d just mentioned. After a while, a thin trail of drool snaked down from the side of his mouth.   
  
"... Got a little something on your face there, Dad," Leon pointed out blandly. Steve paused, dabbed the drool away with his labcoat`s collar and finally got around to replying.   
  
"Well... How`d it happen?"   
  
"I ran up into battle against an opponent completely out of my league after using all of my ammo and a good bit of my energy slapping around Scout Foxes. The guy fought like Bit in a Geno, almost, except he... Turned on his own support towards the end. Not until after he`d taken me down with one of his pincers. Then I was saved. Twice," Leon explained in short order.   
  
"Sounds like you had a pretty good streak of luck, minus that part about losing," Steve commented. "Who ended up saving you?"   
  
"Pierce Summers, you might`ve met her at some point... She saved me the first time, got shot down though. Then Naomi pinned him down and almost killed him, but then an Organoid popped up and teleported him away. Sounds nuts, huh?" Leon asked, letting off a slightly cracked, Steve-like grin at his own luck. How close he`d come to being a burnt shadow on the sand was still enough to make the hairs along the back of his neck stand on end and cause involuntary twitches to his jaw muscles.   
  
"Did the pilot sound like Bit?" Steve asked in return, more serious now, with brows slightly furrowed and his jaw set.   
  
"... Come to think of it, yeah. Something you`re not telling me?"   
  
"It sounds like you took on Bill Chapman," the older Tauros stated about as bluntly as a baseball bat. "He was a member of the Thunder Team, kidnapped in the middle of our battle a week or so before the crap started hitting the fan."   
  
"... That explains _that_," Leon replied, now feeling even luckier than he already had. "Did Chapman have a blue-and-red Organoid?"   
  
"Yep. From what I`ve seen of him, he looked just like Bit with black hair tilted to the right, instead of the left. And brown eyes."   
  
Silence held for a few seconds. Leon finally shifted to look back to Steve, who met his gaze halfway with one of those rare expressions he had when he was in a dead serious frame of mind that precursed a 180* turnaround. This case was no exception.   
  
"Soooo, meet any future wives?" Steve asked bluntly, with a near mirror of the same cracked grin that Leon had had just a few moments before.   
  
"... Isn`t it the mom who`s supposed to nag me about that?"   
  
"Well, Rina`s not here and Leena doesn`t give a damn so long as you give her money on her birthday... _Someone _has to make up for it," Steve replied simply enough, leaning back again and staring out as a Hammer Head slowed to a stop over one of the landing pads and began to lower down, with a pair of Redlers with Booster Cannons and a gunned up Pteras followed suit, casting long shadows across the lobby for a few seconds.   
  
"Well... Not really," Leon finally answered with a bland tone of voice.   
  
"What about Naomi?" Steve asked with a near matching tone. "You two seem close enough..."   
  
Naomi was presently asleep with her head in Leon`s lap.   
  
"... Ha-ha," Leon half-groaned, looking towards the window. "She`s spoken for."   
  
"Do what I did."   
  
"You fluked into it with Mom. Besides, Naomi and I are too platonic for anything to develop," he added as a counter to what his father had just suggested. Unlike Steve, Leon wasn`t enough of an idiot savant in the art of romance to literally _botch_ into a relationship with the girlfriend of one of his own best friends. Besides, he didn`t want to have to slug it out with someone over an old grudge in twenty years.   
  
"Anyone else?" Steve asked, only half-knowing the answer.   
  
"Not really," Leon answered after a few seconds of delay.   
  
"Can`t wait to meet her," Steve replied, his question already answered before his son had ever said a word.   
  
  
"**_SOMEONE SHOOT ME NEXT TIME I TRY TO BE THE DECOY!_**"   
  
Simple enough order to make when you were being chased by a three mile long death machine fast enough to catch up to you at roughly two hundred miles per hour - especially when the damn thing was _gaining on you_ more and more with every second. It was like a rat trying to outrun a stampeding bull elephant, only proportionately worse in just about every way. Elephants usually didn`t carry around hundreds of kilotons of firepower, nor did they have a love of trying to use it at virtually every chance.   
  
For all intents and purposes, the Hellwalker had completely forgotten that everyone else on or above the battlefield exists, it was dedicated solely to destroying the Shadow Fox. To prove the point, it was using just about every gun in its arsenal to do so, causing the nimbler, smaller Zoid to have to weave and draft between hundreds of explosions, which in turn put a very visible dent into its overall speed since it couldn`t keep moving in a straight line.   
  
"Remind me to buy a gun," Pierce`s voice apathetically rang over the comm, she was either completely unworried or simply didn`t care at all. Either way, the Storm Sworder was quick to come into view, swooping in alongside the Raynos and firing on any one of the numerous gaping craters in the Hellwalker`s side, drawing no real attention other than sparse interceptor fire.   
  
The Breaker still stood back, either recovering from its recent frenzy of charged particle beams or simply waiting for the right time to attack.   
  
In short, Mark was utterly alone even amongst his own comrades. It was an alarming, and somewhat disorienting feeling as he tightened his grip on the Fox`s controls for the umpteenth time. He had been letting the Fox take over almost everything for the time being, seeing as how the Zoid could anticipate and adjust to the mass attacks far better than he could right now.   
  
At least, he had been. Around the same time as the Hellwalker came within range of trying to snap its jaws shut right on the Fox`s black-and-gold hide, the control shifted from the Fox to Mark, and the Zoid`s performance and tactics showed it, one foreclaw stabbing into the ground at the proper angle to act as an anchor, swinging the Shadow Fox right around and skidding it to an ungainly, but unpredicted halt. As Mark had hoped, the Walker`s guns failed to keep track, but dodging those teeth wasn`t going to be an easy thing to accomplish.   
  
_ "Luck don`t fail me now,"_ he thought in earnest, driving the Fox forward and to the right, then left and then right again. The Walker`s head shifted with the first change, slugged into the second and was unable to make the third in time, the impaler teeth in its mouth slamming shut on thin air and dirt as the Demon`s head drove into the ground, only to violently tear back out in an effort to swing itself at the fleeing Shadow Fox, which was now already halfway towards the legs on the Walker`s left side.   
  
Gunshots rang out once again, Mark wondered how much more abuse his hearing could take and the Fox tweaked into action, gracelessly hopping towards the side in mid-run and causing a hail of plasma-packed instant death to streak by with a scream of heat and pressure, rattling the senses of both Zoid and pilot at once. Guns across the Walkers neck and tail finally began to kick into action as the body started to turn, but by then, Mark had already passed the first foot and was coming up on the second.   
  
The Demon shifted its weight with a heave, forward and to the left, its back left leg slinging up with deceptive speed only to fall right back down like a hammer. The Shadow Fox barely avoided the foot itself, but was promptly thrown over by the resulting shockwave that its impact caused, ground shattering as raw force blew through the air, flinging the Fox up and to the left.   
  
Mark was silent aside from the stereotypical hissing yell of any pilot in battle, eyes winced shut as the Fox somehow flipped itself upright and landed on both feet, coiling down into a crouch and springing back up sideways and towards the right once again, only to dart left and forward on its second landing. Mark opened his eyes with a shudder and took control back once again, feeling rather than seeing when the Hellwalker readjusted its weight once again, standing straight.   
  
The main monitor promptly switched out of conventional viewmode, dust clouding its basic optics, and instead generating an eerie looking view of the battlefield composed solely by sound, hazed slightly from the dust but still virtually crystal clear in comparison. Mark briefly rose a brow, seeing as how that _hadn`t_ been a feature he`d known of the last time he`d piloted the Fox, but quickly readjusted to the blacklit world of squiggly glowing outlines, his eyes finding the sudden movement of the Walker`s tail to be of particular interest.   
  
Like a great whip, it swung from one side to the other, gathering momentum before curling around and slightly upward, then coming down with all guns blazing. The Fox tore out of the dust, someone shouted his name and the optics flared back to normal.   
  
"Fucking son of a _bitch_," he growled out, swinging the Zoid up and over the initial line of shots, almost all of which exploded right behind and beneath the Shadow Fox, throwing it ever higher into the air as that colossal tail came crashing down with the crack of a false sonic boom, sounding almost like a maniacal jet engine than anything else. Either way, the Fox again curled itself upright, charging the claws before Mark had even figured out what was going on.   
  
_ [Executing strike pattern Corkscrew...]   
  
_ By the time Mark glanced down at the console, he felt the entire Zoid jerk from a spin, coming down at an angle and passing between a pair of quick-tracking turrets near the back of the tail. The Strike Laser Claw stabbed into the base of one with a precision that was literally inhuman, slitting into an inches-wide gap in the actual armor and tearing through it. The turret broke away, pulse lasers streaked and its companion exploded as several shots went right down the main barrel and lanced into its firing mechanism.   
  
The Shadow Fox artfully touched down with a skid, stabilizers spraying out a hail of sparks in its front legs as the Hellwalker continued running, unable to so quickly change its course.   
  
"How the **_HELL_**?!" Mark yelped, still staring down at the Fox`s console screen.   
  
The only response he got was a somewhat amused sounding growl from the Zoid, which promptly turned around on its own, the laser vulcan gun swinging back into place. The Walker finally managed to get over what had just happened and sharply tried to turn to the right, shifting virtually all of its massive weight onto its back and front left legs in the process, tail and neck alike shifting here and there for added stability.   
  
For a few seconds, Mark held his breath, wondering how much longer it would be before the Hellwalker got around to firing on him again. Not like it couldn`t already, it seemed that the pilot - or whatever kind of intelligence drove the damn thing - was having trouble comprehending what had just happened. Not that Mark blamed it, but still.   
  
"We`ll take it from here," Hameros pointed out as both the Raynos and Storm Sworder literally blew into view, sweeping down from overhead and opening fire like death from above. "Take a break, catch your breath and come back in after Chapman joins back up."   
  
"Will do. Good luck, both of you."   
  
"We won`t be the ones needing it," Pierce replied before Jamie could utter a word, catching the Walker`s attention by hitting it with a missile near the remaining functional eye.   
  
_ "That`s what you think,"_ Mark thought with a shake of the head, letting the Fox decide whether it wanted to stay nearby or haul ass to a safer vantage point.   
  
_ [Initiating Stopgap Repair System. Estimated time to maximum stabilizer performance: 2 minutes...]   
  
_ "Stopgap? Did Chapman give you all this crap or were you holdin` out on me?"   
  
_ [You never thought to ask.] _Came the simple, silent reply on the console monitor.   
  
"... Oh."   
  
  
"Keep missile usage down a bit, we can`t exactly stop off at a transport and reload here," Jamie bit out as the Raynos banked gently to the right, dodging a stream of anti-air pulsefire in the process.   
  
"I`ve seen little old ladies be more reckless than you," Pierce replied simply, her own manuevering far less restricted than that of the JT. Where Jamie was trying to keep movement to a minimum to keep his aim steady, Pierce acted on a mixture of impulse and premeditation, dodging without hesitation, taking potshots with whatever was available and generally just trying to be a thorn in the Hellwalker`s side.   
  
"You don`t know anything about me," Jamie retorted with about the same tone, squeezing the trigger and feeling his Zoid shudder subtly from the recoil of its new long ranged rifle - with no small amount of satisfaction. Comparitively minor explosions spread across one of the lesser armored joints in the Walker`s neck, barely even causing minor dents there.   
  
"And I can say the same to you," Pierce shot back yet again, swinging the Storm Sworder down towards the ground at an almost insanely low altitude, then popping up its headblade and slowing down. For a moment, Jamie _swore_ he could hear her taunting the three mile deathbringer as if it were an impotent golf player in a mid-life crisis, and then he heard the screeching of metal against energized metal, only barely able to watch as a silver-and-red blur ducked under the Walker and arced back up into view on the other side, barely able to dodge through the shriek of plasma bolts that it met in reply.   
  
"You`re nuts, I can say that much," Jamie finally muttered, swinging the JT towards the Walker`s head and pulling the triggers again - three of them in a row. The Zoid again shuddered subtly, pulse lasers and two types of cannon shell streaking through the air with several cracks and hums - the cannon rounds each hitting around the back of the Walker`s already injured eye and the lasers managed to further slag the broken Rev Raptor blade into it.   
  
Jamie swooped up, the Storm Sworder crossed into his vision and his ears almost instantly went deaf as the Hellwalker threw its head this way and that, howling with pain, teeth gnashing ferally as electricity lanced out of its already wounded eye, crackling into the air and causing a surge of smoke to follow. The guns briefly stopped firing, Jamie`s hearing managed to return right as Pierce made yet another wisecrack.   
  
"Well _duh_... Knew we should`ve aimed for the gimp eye," she commented a bit blandly, whipping back around in a tight U-turn and heading back in with her gattling gun blazing.   
  
"Just be careful about wasting ammo on it - we don`t know just _where_ we have to hit it to kill the thing..."   
  
"In the head. His main core`s in the body, but a second, more important one`s situated in the head, and a third, less important one is in the base of his tail," Bill Chapman calmly chimed in, his voice sounding somewhat disinterested in the cold, surgical strikes that the Sworder and JT were throwing out.   
  
"... And _how_ do you know this?" Pierce asked where Jamie was still trying to comprehend that the Walker had _three _cores just to function.   
  
"He told me so himself."   
  
  
_ "How **DARE YOU?!**" _A voice screamed through the stark nothing between minds, only a step beneath shattering thought from its intensity alone.   
  
_ "Pretty easily, actually," _Bill replied with a slight wince, feeling the Geno Breaker`s protective presence following the more hostile one right into his mind. _"You don`t **murder** a million people and not expect some karmic retribution when you go spouting your mouth off about your own weaknesses, dumbass."   
  
_ The Raynos and Sworder each swooped up and over the Hellwalker`s back hump, corkscrewing into a rapid ascent and dodging fire with virtually every second that ticked by.   
  
"Pierce, Jamie," Bill began, his voice terse and completely stripped of the morbidly casual tone it had carried when he`d first arrived at the former Blitz Team Base. Both aerial Zoids promptly hit their boosters and straightened out, the fire from the Walker`s defensive guns ceased instantly and the Demon`s attention shifted.   
  
_ "Trying to get the drop on me? **WELL IT ISN`T WORKING!**"_ The great beast`s Voice declared, jarring Chapman`s vision for a few crucial seconds. Guns began to shift, but the head had already gotten into position, the battery of heavy weaponry on its snout promptly screaming to life as the colossal Zoid let out a war cry that could easily deafen someone. The Shadow Fox had been lucky to have moved out of the way.   
  
The Breaker, on the other hand, was presently immobile, its footlocks in place and its shield holding strong as anti-Zoid plasma bolts the size of Command Wolves crashed into it, an almost gleeful sense translating into Bill`s thoughts as his sight returned. Neon blue eyes set onto a target point as the Walker began to open its mouth, the Geno`s particle intake fan hummed to life.   
  
_ "Surprise attacks usually aren`t my style anyway,"_ he finally muttered out as the heavy gunfire came to a grinding halt, the smoke promptly drifting into his field of vision. It didn`t matter, the Breaker could still see through it anyway.   
  
Duelling spheres of supercharged particles formed up in the mouths of either Zoid, the Breaker`s tail went rigid and the Walker`s body fumbled to try and keep up with the aim of its head. Bill had the edge though, where the Hellwalker was still gathering power just to carry out what, to it, was only a mid-level particle beam, the Breaker`s own shield energy was being funneled into the particle fan on its back, causing the charge time to decrease rapidly.   
  
In short, while the Hellwalker`s vastly more powerful cannon was still charging up, Bill`s shield had already finished dropping and his own gun was ready to fire.   
  
Pincers flipped back, the Geno issued a loud roar and its pilot echoed with a shout, while the smoke first burst forward and then split right open from the initial pressure wave of the Breaker`s charged particle beam, which itself screamed straight through the miles of space between both the blue Geno and the colossal Demon, impacting into the Walker`s own building energy and hammering it into the massive Zoid`s throat.   
  
A mix between a human scream and a Whale King`s shriek blistered through the ears of anyone within a dozen miles of the battle. The Hellwalker - all three miles of it - _staggered_ as it charged particle cannon overloaded, overheated and exploded, the blast erupting as a fiery belch from the Demon`s gigantic mouth. Gun parts the size of cars slagged into the air and hit the ground like molten lava, the fire tilted like a sideways mushroom cloud for several seconds before the Walker threw its head back towards the sky, balance seeming to waver slowly from side to side. Several of its once imposing teeth had been melted away into nothing, a few others had been broken, while the jaw itself seemed to only barely be able to move.   
  
_ "**I`LL KILL YOU FOR THAT!!!**"   
  
"You talk too much, blowhard,"_ Bill replied simply, disengaging the footlocks and mentally turning down the power of the charged particle gun. Boosters kicked on in synch, the Breaker hurtled forward and up, slinging through the air in a blue blur with claws flipped forward and their arm mounts fully deployed and extended. Rockets and machine guns fired from the hips, its grappler claws seemed to fidget and its head blade flipped forward.   
  
"Mark!"   
  
"Focus fire on the hole in its foot - I know," the Fox pilot`s voice replied before he could even finish speaking. Almost with perfect timing, laser vulcan shots lanced by the Breaker`s side and the Shadow Fox made its presence known again with a synthesized howl of battle.   
  
"Pierce, Jamie, aim for the throat," Bill calmly ordered, feeling the surging build of more charged particles in the Geno`s mouth. With near surgical precision, the Zoid pointed itself towards the Walker`s wounded leg ankle joint, sliding above the ground in a slightly different direction as guns finally began to fire at random. Even in all of its pain, the Hellwalker still seemed to have the presence of mind to at least _try_ and defend itself.   
  
  
_ "**SON OF A BITCH!**"   
  
_ His sight blanked red and warning signs flashed across every field of his limitless vision, every single part of his head _burned _to such an extent that not even the selectively numb programming he had installed into himself could keep the pain away. It seared into every mechanical nerve, brought mortality back to his senses and reminded him, for countless nanoseconds, that he was still _vulnerable_.   
  
Henry Rommel, the Hellwalker, did _not_ like that feeling.   
  
_ "What goes around, comes around."   
  
"**FUCK YOU!**"_ Came the instant reply, a telepathic shockwave lancing across frequencies unknown to most fields of human science. The Geno Breaker let out a groan and slowed briefly in response, reacting solely to the instant migraine that almost levelled its pilot out of his senses. _"**AFTER ALL THAT I`VE SUFFERED THROUGH, YOU DON`T HAVE THE FUCKING RIGHT TO LECTURE ME! YOU`RE NOTHING BUT A GOD DAMNED RODENT TO ME!**"_   
  
Grinding teeth and a seething hiss somehow reached his ears as the warning screens faded away, one by one, and gunfire resumed. Bolts of plasma threw off of the Hellwalker`s massive body, neck and tail in random directions and at random times, some guns firing single shots, others completely going berserk, while the heaviest cannons, the ones on its main body, jolted around and fired off at random, artillery and externally fired charged particle beams and bolts alike literally _gutting _the surrounding battlefield and turning the skies above into a virtual hell zone.   
  
_ "I was wrong about you," _Bill finally growled out telepathically as the Breaker recovered, swinging through a dozen plasma bolts and boosting over a dumbfired missile that would`ve been put to better use trying to strike at the Sworder and Raynos.   
  
_ "It`s not that I`m not like **you**, it`s that **you`re** not like **me**."   
  
"What the fuck are you blabbering on about you little **RAT?!**"_ Another telepathic surge, this one met with a vastly weaker defense, mental static literally filtering the attack into nothing.   
  
_ "When it comes down to it, **Henry Rommel**, I still have my humanity. You?"   
  
_ Sight finally finished returning, the Walker almost instantly started to throw its head blindly towards the ground like a gigantic ball and chain, the weight of the tail swinging into an awkward counterbalance.   
  
_ "You`re nothing but a spoiled drug addict throwing a temper tantrum because he doesn`t like his new toy."   
  
_ The Breaker slipped almost artfully out of the path of the downward headswing upon landing, boosting to the side and swinging back around in a half-orbit towards the Walker`s chest. Gunfire obliterated virtually everything around it, yet the Geno itself seemed virtually invulnerable, its charged particle gun firing again with a quick burst.   
  
_ "And **your **puny little lizard is reaching its limits already, you pathetic excuse for a runaway farmboy."   
  
_ The Shadow Fox appeared in the Hellwalker`s line of sight, claws glowing like golden death as the smaller Zoid and its hellbent pilot suddenly realized that they had just made a fatal error. If Chapman had any comeback, he didn`t bother with the concentration to send it, instead blurting out with two other voices across a broadband frequency of some kind. Even as the Core fluid leaked from both of the pits that had once been his eyes, even as the pain continued to burn into his consciousness like a cattle brand, what used to be Henry 'Surak' Rommel let out a depraved mental laugh.   
  
"**_MARK!!!_**"   
  
The ground exploded in dust and smoke. Miles away, a young woman with green hair shot up in bed with an ear piercing scream...   
  
  
_ "That must`ve hurt."   
  
_ Silence dominated the hangar of the former Blitz Team base, underscored by the sole presence of a boy dressed in a shaggy white t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, holding a pair of electrobinoculars to his eyes. His expression could be described only as neutral, there was no fear in it, nor was there sorrow or joy, only an apathy that could only barely be understood.   
  
** [**_"It`s not always the smartest choice to go charging into a situation where the odds are completely against you, but sometimes, it`s still the right thing to do."_**]**  
  
The words still rang in his ears, long after the man who`d spoken them had gone. The emotion behind them had been well hidden, but there`d been an underlying sense of desperation that he had been able to detect, although it didn`t quite fit the definition found in a dictionary. Most defined desperation as a suicidal gamble when faced with an utter lack of hope.   
  
What he`d seen earlier hadn`t been desperation from a _lack _of hope, it`d been from a _surplus _of it.   
  
** [**_"I couldn`t save anyone back there, but I can at least try to keep it from happening again."_**]**  
  
How _that _worked was anyone`s guess, most certainly not his own though. That a simple phrase, articulated through a half-lie that he`d recognized in an instant, could drive a man to gleefully confront a harbinger of nothing short of instant _death _was something that he couldn`t quite wrap his mind around in the slightest. He tried though, tongue in cheek, brown eyes narrowed in thought, black hair rustling a bit in a breeze as a distant cry flittered at his ears, audible only just barely. It was the sound of the Hellwalker`s screams.   
  
_ "What will you do now?"_ He wondered to himself, finally putting down the binoculars with a look that was worn far beyond his years. Coincidentally, the door into the hangar slid open without warning, the sounds of a young woman yelling from behind him coming into his ears.   
  
"He`s not here," the boy finally said, before she could even pause and notice that he was present. The Shadow Fox, Raynos and Storm Sworder being gone should`ve tipped her off enough as it was, but sleep and emotion seemed to cloud her thoughts enough that she shouted again anyway.   
  
"**_WHERE`D THEY GO?!_**"   
  
He let out a wince, finally. Her voice sounded wracked, raw and strained to levels that could cause a week`s worth of irritation if she didn`t quiet down soon. The stress behind it though, that was something that no amount of silence could fix, at least not that he knew of.   
  
With a speed that defied human legs, she had run up and come to a grinding halt next to him, breathing unevenly. She must have run all the way through the base looking for the man that he had just watched get hammered into a potentially bloody pancake in the desert. Still, he remained calm, perhaps even unsympathetic, as he spoke up again.   
  
"Marcus, your sister, Jamie Hameros and a man named Bill Chapman went to fight the Hellwalker out in the desert. They have until noon before Kyle is set to send us all off and away from here, assuming they don`t stop it somehow. Even if they do, they`ll probably all die."   
  
A sting shocked through his cheek, the air of the hangar echoed a crack of skin against skin.   
  
"Don`t you _dare _talk like that around me!" Abigail Summers yelled with the authority of a mother who didn`t even fully recognize her own position yet.   
  
"I`ll make a mental note of that. I was simply stating a likely outcome," he replied after a few moments, not even rubbing his reddened cheek or shedding a single tear. "They`re already down to three."   
  
There was a pause.   
  
He heard a lip being chewed, registered a distinct sniffle.   
  
"... It wasn`t him. Or your sister," he finally lied, though his tone wasn`t comforting in the slightest. The lie itself worked a bit though, and finally, he brought the binoculars back up to his eyes, listening only disinterestedly to the sounds of the woman he was rapidly coming to think of as his new mother speaking, more to someone who wasn`t even there than to herself or him.   
  
"Come back alive, both of you..."   
  
  
A depraved cackle shot through the mind of Bill Chapman. His jaw hung open in shock, the broadband was silent and the Breaker itself seemed to pause for a moment in response to its pilot. The Sworder and Raynos straightened out at several thousand feet and the Hellwalker finally threw its head up towards the sky, letting out a shrill, ear piercing shriek, all guns going silent for but a few moments, its wounded jaws on the verge of breaking from the force of its own roar as more smoke blew from the burnt hole that used to be its main charged particle cannon, flame retardent foams finally being deployed.   
  
What everyone was in shock about, however, wasn`t that the Walker had managed to succeed in taking out one of their own. It was that exactly the opposite had happened - as evidenced by the tiny black-and-brown speck currently dangling from the side of the Hellwalker`s already banged up head.   
  
It was the Shadow Fox.   
  
"**_DID YOU HONESTLY THINK YOU`D GET RID O` MY ASS THAT EASILY?!_**" Marcus Harlock demanded with an utterly _absurd _sense of glee shining through in his voice, meeting a reply that Bill felt more than he heard, with the Hellwalker screaming so loudly that the ground rattled in protest and clouds up in the sky were blown apart into an imperfect circle. Still, the Shadow Fox hung on, covered in dirt and grime, charcoal red optics glowing in a battle frenzy and golden claws embedded fiercely into the remaining eye of the great beast as its pilot continued blurting out random insults.   
  
The Demon threw its head from side to side, screaming still, yet the Fox continued to try and claw into place, back legs kicked away at the colossal Zoid`s armor while the laser vulcan gun fired off aimlessly, raking shots across the top of the eye in question. Eventually though, one Strike Laser Claw was torn out and then swung right back in, shattering feet worth of glassteel that could`ve taken a full fledged artillery barrage without cracking, plunging all the way in to the wrist as stabilizers spewed out bolts and sparks of electricity.   
  
"That man is utterly fucking insane," Bill finally managed to mumble out, his jaw still hanging open as the Geno again began to dodge - now just trying to avoid being stepped on as the Hellwalker`s entire body flailed and stomped in every direction, desperately trying to throw off the lone Zoid clinging to its rapidly damaging eye.   
  
"Pierce, Jamie!" He managed to get out, only to look away and hear incoming sonic booms as both Zoids passed right overhead, firing missiles almost at random and tagging right into the Hellwalker`s damaged wrist on luck alone, then barreling out from under the huge beast and soaring away as if they`d never even been there at all. Bill was inclined to follow their example.   
  
"How many shots we got left, buddy?" He asked, to which the Geno replied with only the mental equivelent of a single raised finger and a verbal growl. The Zoid boosted back, the Shadow Fox howled its war cry and the Walker finally began to slow down, even as its mental Voice echoed through Chapman`s thoughts.   
  
_ "Gnnnnghahhhh**hh**-**GET THIS GOD FORSAKEN PIECE OF SHIT OFF OF ME!!!**" _  
  
Bill could only let out a warped grin all his own as the Blue Geno Breaker slowed backwards and to a stop, standing squarely in front of the shaking Hellwalker. Footlocks clamped into place, the particle intake fan hummed and churned, the Zoids optics lit up fiercely and its tail went rigid. The jaws flipped open, the barrel extended out into view and power began to gather from both the impact and the rim of the weapon itself.   
  
It was the last charged particle beam that the Breaker was going to be able to fire at full power without needing a rest to regain its already drained energy reserves. He was going to make it count.   
  
_ "But isn`t he just a pathetic, harmless rodent?" _He had to ask, just out of sheer, unfamiliar spite. The only reply was a long string of curses as the Hellwalker started to stomp forward, now heedless of the weight it was putting on any of its limbs, and equally heedless of the Shadow Fox still clawing its way through the now viciously red glassteel eye, which already outsized the Zoid itself by several times.   
  
Gunfire sprayed at almost every angle from the huge Zoid`s body, an explosion finally caught Chapman`s attention, and it wasn`t the explosion of one of the shieldclaw arms blowing off, or the sound of plasma beams being distorted and sucked down into the fan at near light speed, already on the verge of overloading the power systems of the Breaker`s particle gun. No, the explosion that Bill finally paid attention to was that of a lancing bolt clip off one of the JT`s wings, then the other right after it, leaving only the burnt bases to remain.   
  
"Shit, **_JAMIE!_**" Bill found himself yelling right alongside Pierce, whose Storm Sworder swiftly broke away entirely and swooped down after the JT, the green Zoid`s pilot yelling out a colorful string of curses that`d make a nun blush in the process.   
  
"Pierce, get aft-" "I`m already on it," the woman replied before he`d even finished speaking. A warning alert flashed across the Breaker`s screen, a mental slap upside the head drew his attention back to the actual fighting, just in time to watch as the Hellwalker began to stampede forward.   
  
"Fuck."   
  
Footlocks disengaged, the Breaker`s charge continued building to levels that threatened near instant burn-out. Boosters flared, the Zoid hurtled forward, kicked its legs straight out and ahead in a clumsy V, while the Walker threw its weight back and swung up with its front right leg, going for a near repeat of the soccer kick it had used against Kyle Mazemia the previous night.   
  
_ "I don`t even **NEED TO SEE YOU!**"   
  
_ It didn`t work.   
  
_ "Too bad, I was about to tell you to watch this," _Bill managed to snappily shoot back, just before giving the mental command for the airborn Geno Breaker to finally release its destructive payload with a blast of both forward moving energy with enough intensity to vaporize a battalion of Gojulas units and have power to spare, as well as the instant surge of recoil that came along with it. Jets burned to their maximum, Bill Chapman let out a howling scream and the Blue Geno Breaker flew back, held aloft by its awkwardly positioned legs and propelled by its own main gun.   
  
The beam slammed into the Walker`s already wounded leg, slagging off an entire Elephander-sized toe and plowing right through the already damaged wrist before raking up the rest of the limb and ending at the shoulder, leaving behind a charred trail of devestation in its wake. The Hellwalker shrieked and threw its foot back down with a stumble, just before flames erupted from it, both from the earlier entrance wound that had been left by the first major hit that Bill had gotten, and from beneath it, as the explosion funneled down into the ground and liquified its way out through the dirt, which promptly became lava.   
  
Foam sprayed out of both entrance wounds, but the armor across the leg still scorched and burned, letting off superheated steam and smoke as the Demon tried to keep from tumbling over.   
  
_ "**FUCK YOU!**"_ The Hellwalker`s Mind cried once more. _"**FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU!!!**"_   
  
_ "My, what an intelligent thing to say,"_ Bill replied in kind, just as the cannon cut out with a burst of smoke from both the barrel and the fan, as well as jets of steam erupting from its tail vents. The Breaker`s leg boosters stopped firing, its back thrusters shut off as well. Both legs then bent back as if in a mid-air crouch, straightening downward with a kick as the jets fired off again, throwing the Geno into a backflip.   
  
The Blue Breaker landed hard on its feet with a skid, digging out a pair of trenches that were each longer than football fields by the time it came to a stop, the thrusters in its legs again cutting out. Both pilot and Zoid let out matching wheezes, Harlock`s voice cut into the mental frey unknowingly.   
  
"I think ya pissed `im off even worse than me!" The Fox pilot practically cackled like a deranged lunatic, his smaller, straining Zoid _still _clinging to the Hellwalker`s head as if it had some sort of death wish.   
  
"Bad news, Mark," Bill replied simply, flipping both his killing spike and remaining shieldclaw blades forward, the latter closing tightly as if to be used like one big knife with a few gaps in it.   
  
"... What?" Harlock asked, just as the Hellwalker began to stumble forward like an enraged drunk.   
  
"That was the last particle beam I had."   
  
"**_WHAT?! _**How the fuck can an _energy gun _run outta ammo?!" The other pilot yelled, somehow managing to remain coherent even as his Zoid, and by extension himself as well, was being flung around like a rag doll with an attitude problem.   
  
"The gun blew out. It`s useless `til I can fix it," Bill answered in short order, tongue inching towards his cheek at the sight of the incoming Hellwalker.   
  
"**_YOU DON`T HAVE TIME TO FIX IT!_**"   
  
"I _know that_."   
  
"Can`t you just... Work some o` that funky shit you did earlier on it?" Mark groaned out with a jerky voice, obvious evidence as to the conditions he was dealing with. Audio-only made it somewhat impossible to gauge Harlock`s actual physical conditions, but Chapman was willing to bet they weren`t very comfortable.   
  
"Not without time to prepare and focus," Bill answered again.   
  
_ "What are you going to do now, Billy?"   
  
_ "Can`t you do _anything_?!"   
  
"Yeah, actually," Bill muttered out in reply.   
  
"What are you gonna do then?!   
  
_ "Fight? Without your charged particle cannon - **YOU CAN`T DO SHIT TO ME!**"   
  
_ "Simple..."   
  
The Breaker`s head spike flipped back once again, Chapman took a deep breath.   
  
"Run for my life."   
  
And with that calm phrase, the Breaker jumped back, spun around with a swing of its tail and reignited its leg and back thrusters for the umpteenth time in the past few minutes, blasting away at full speed before it had ever even finished touching the ground.   
  
_ "You think that`ll help you?" _The Hellwalker asked, even as sparks and smoke started to leak from its once uninjured right eye. _"Do you honestly think that running away will help you?!"_   
  
"_Gee_," Mark blandly began.   
  
_ "**I DON`T EVEN NEED TO SEE YOU! I CAN HUNT YOU DOWN WHEREVER YOU GO, NO MATTER HOW FAR YOU RUN!**"_   
  
"Isn`t _that _reassuring..."   
  
_ "**DIE!!!**"   
  
_ With all guns blazing, and with the Shadow Fox coming along whether Mark wanted to or not, the Hellwalker stampeded forward, chasing after the infinitely smaller Geno Breaker with absolutely _no_ regard for its own wellbeing.   
  
  
Falling to one`s death at mach two or three from over a mile off the ground really wasn`t as bad as some people made it out to be, at least no the eyes of one Jamie Hameros, currently half-pinned back against his seat from the G-forces and the fact that he presently weighed roughly two or three times as much as normal. Not to mention that little technicality about all the weight being pulled in a completely different direction than what his body was suited for.   
  
_ "I guess there`re worse ways to die,"_ he mused, knowing full well that it wouldn`t have taken too much effort to just reach up and pull the emergency lever for the ejector seat.   
  
** [**_"Go ahead and do what you want."_**]**   
  
It was a simple mixture of guilt and apathy that kept him from doing it. The angle of the fall was so shallow that he might end up surviving it anyway, assuming the crash didn`t cause the forward thruster to clog up with debris, suffer an engine jam and explode. Even if the thing had been useful, it was still somewhat of a hazard because of that annoying little catch.   
  
Breathing was somewhat strained, the air was being forced aside almost visibly as the screaming Raynos dipped a bit deeper towards the unforgiving ground below.   
  
_ "Just wish this one would hurry up,"_ he thought to himself, staring straight ahead with impatiently gray eyes winced almost shut, his hands lying in his lap with an almost perverse sense of dignified order to them. He had no regrets. None that he cared enough to stop from allowing himself to die, anyway.   
  
** [**_"Now you get to live with what you`ve just done."_**]**   
  
Those same eyes finally fell shut as he realized, much to his own chargrin, that he still had regrets after all, ones that he really _did _care about. Unfortunately for his potential future, they still weren`t enough to make him want to pull the ejection lever, or simply hit the forward thruster and used it to slow himself down, then hover his way to the ground below.   
  
With no real amusement, he gave a passing thought as to what the Wild Eagle - _Will _- would have thought of this whole mess. Would the other have laughed at him? Cried because his own sacrifices had all been in vain? Shook his head in disgust? Tried to take over and survive?   
  
** [**_"Good-bye, Linda."_]   
  
What would his sister have thought? For that matter, what would his mother and father think? And what about Brad, Bit and Leena? Even the Doc?   
  
** [**_"**AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!**"_**]**   
  
What would Leyla think?   
  
** [**_"... Oh, god..."   
  
"What have I done?"_**]**   
  
After the way their last meeting had ended...   
**  
[**_A snap of metal cabling.   
  
"**JAMIE!!!**"   
  
A bolt of multicolored energy.   
  
"**LEYLA!!!**"   
  
The wall ripped open.   
  
Six seconds, a Fox appeared.   
  
Brad yelled.   
  
The ceiling shattered like glass.   
  
"**TIME TO DIE, BOYS AND GIRLS!!!**"_**]**   
  
Would she even give a damn?   
  
"_**TURN ON YOUR FORWARD THRUSTER, YOU IDIOT!**_"   
  
The voice on the other end of the comm jolted him from thought, and reflexively, he complied.   
  
"_Pierce_?!" Jamie finally managed to yelp, glancing back over his shoulder and jerking forward with enough force that the harness dug at his shoulders, just as the Raynos JT`s forward engine cut on, fire bursting out of it and instantly beginning to slow the clipped winged Zoid down.   
  
"You were expecting Saint Bob?" The woman calmly answered , the Storm Sworder finally swooping up into his line of sight.   
  
"Why the hell aren`t you back with the others?! _No heroics_,_ remember_?" He growled out, wanting to just cut off the forward thruster and go back to drowning in his own self-pity on the way towards oblivion.   
  
"Since when have I bothered following orders, dumbass?" She asked, her Zoid rapidly approaching from above and behind, swords drawn back, legs slung forward.   
  
"You`re not gonna do what I think you are, are you?" He asked a bit dismally, realizing now that she wasn`t going to just let him drop no matter what he said. It would`ve been disturbingly easy to just shoot her down with the tailguns, it wasn`t like she was ready to dodge or anything...   
  
_ "No,"_ he finally bit at himself, belatedly realizing that he`d already grabbed the trigger and started to swing the guns up to make the attack. Without thinking, he removed his fingers from the trigger, waiting for an answer as the Sworder moved into place overhead.   
  
"Take a guess."   
  
And with that, the silver Zoid drifted downward, long toes singing into the remains of the Raynos` wings as the ankles clamped down, holding the green Zoid in place relative to its larger ally. With that, Pierce took full control, starting to slow herself and the JT down in a wide, gentle turn, with Jamie silently playing the part of an aerial brake to keep his own mass from throwing the Storm Sworder off balance. The unseen road back down to the ground was going to be long, but at least he had an eagle`s eye view of the chase playing itself out in the distance...   
  
  
Hellfire split up from the ground, dirt turned into glass and dust boiled into putried smoke, yet the Blue Geno Breaker, missing one of its shieldclaws and suffering from an overloaded charged particle gun continued onward, weaving through salvo after blindfired salvo as the Shadow Fox gouged into the eye of the Demon, virtually everything in sight letting out some sort of war cry.   
  
It had all come down to the wire, only one side was going to walk away alive. Marcus Harlock, who`d lost an uncle to the previous battle, and Bill Chapman, who`d gained personal insight from it in ways he himself would`ve found impossible to articulate, or the former Henry Rommel, who`d gained only new depths to a rage that already burned like an out of control wildfire, consuming what little was left of his humanity in the process.   
  
There was something in the air within the Geno Breaker`s cockpit, a tension so thick it could`ve been cut with a knife and duct taped back up again. The Shadow Fox howled a cry of battle in the background, it only barely registered in Chapman`s ears as he swerved to avoid the umpteenth plasma blast, just as an anti-Zoid round the size of a Gustav plowed into the ground in front of him, tearing out a dozen tons of dirt and dust, yet the Breaker simply hover-skated over it. A growl finally hit his senses, tunnel vision threatened to set in at every single second where firepower wasn`t needing to be dodged.   
  
"I _know that already_," he bit out at the Zoid, which again swerved to the side to avoid an errant missile.   
  
_ "Where`s that gritty courage now you fucking scum?" _The Hellwalker spat into his thoughts with a vile tone, somehow managing to shut out the unspeakable pain that Marcus Harlock and the Shadow Fox were causing. Apparently, Henry had only bothered with surface programming when it came to numbing the eyes.   
  
_ "Why run away? You know I`m going to trample you anyway."   
  
"If you`re so deadset on trampling me, stop shooting," _Bill retorted instantly, feeling the Zoid rattled all around him as a shot lanced into its back, blowing chunks out of the base of the particle intake fan.   
  
_ "Then stop **MOVING!**"   
  
_ Blue tinted to black as a missile corkscrewed into the remaining clawshield, gouging into its outermost layer of armoring and exploding. The blast did more to throw the Breaker off course than to actually damage it, although a gigantic black mark was left as a result.   
  
_ "Unlike you, I still know that I have choices, Henry."   
  
"And you choose to live? How **touching**."   
  
_ Lips curled into a snarl, brows furrowed, the Demon let out a roar and the Breaker pilot responded only with more running, again swerving to avoid a blast of plasma, and again almost biting the big one as another Gustav-sized anti-Zoid round slammed into the ground and exploded next to it.   
  
It almost felt as if the landscape itself were starting to give out from the way the Hellwalker was stampeding, running after the infinitely smaller Geno Breaker as if it were a mouse in the path of an enraged bull elephant, heedlessly swinging its weight from left to right with every heaving dual step. A small shockwave lit off for a mile in every direction as a result - it was starting to lose ground.   
  
_ "I don`t choose to live, Rommel, I just do," _Bill finally managed to reply, cutting the leg engines for a moment and letting the Geno skid along on the ground, back thrusters also giving out after a few seconds.   
  
The guns cut out, the Hellwalker continued to approach and the Shadow Fox continued to fire and stab at random, coming ever closer to stalling out with each passing second of the abuse it was inflicting on itself to keep fighting.   
  
_ "Convenient thing to say when you give up," _the Walker replied with the notion of a sadistic little grin, sparks flying out of virtually every limb as the Demon pushed itself to the limit and beyond.   
  
_ "Who said I was giving up?" _Bill asked, spacing out the Breaker`s feet as the Zoid issued a fierce, challenging growl.   
  
_ "You`re an idiot."   
  
"And you`re a genocidal brat."   
  
"I`ll see you in Hell."   
  
"I`m looking forward to it."   
  
_ The clawblades split for a moment, seeming to tense up before closing back together, pointing down. The defiant Geno brought its busted side towards the charging Hellwalker without the slightest bit of fear, though anxiety threatened to consume its pilot alive and screaming.   
  
Sweat poured down his face, the killing spike flipped forward again with a gleam of silver. The Breaker`s blue optics lit up and matched the ferocity of his own eyes, which narrowed in preparation as he leaned forward along with the Zoid, feeling its weight shift with his own, feeling the Core light up until the beast`s emotions matched up to his. Almost nodding to the huge Demon to attack, the Breaker tilted its head back, tapping the spike against each of the remaining clawblades and opening its smoke filled mouth in what almost looked like a fanged grin.   
  
"_What the hell are you doing_?! _**MOVE!**_" Mark`s voice cracked across the already fuzzy radio, while the Shadow Fox finally stopped gouging into the eye of the Walker with one last straight punch, literally anchoring itself into the great Demon`s optics in anticipation.   
  
"No."   
  
"**_GET OUT OF THERE!_**" Jamie`s voice finally echoed into his ears as the Storm Sworder and Raynos - one carrying the other - reappeared on scanners, just as a 150mm slug punched through one of the gaping holes that the Fox had already punched into the Walker`s formerly good eye, followed by one last Triple Sworder Missile.   
  
"We all have choices," Bill finally muttered out, the Breaker`s tail arcing towards the shrieking Hellwalker, just as shield energy gathered around the remaining clawblades, then the shield arm itself.   
  
"This..."   
  
A small explosion blew out part of the glassteel and the materials behind it, leaving a clear view of the shell around the second Core.   
  
"_Is_..."   
  
Marcus Harlock didn`t hesitate, neither did the Shadow Fox for that matter, in pouring what was left of its energy into one last Strike Laser Claw, then _knifing it_ through the gap, slagging glassteel and literally burying the Zoid shoulder deep. With almost unbelievable ease, the claw slapped against the outer shell and shattered it onto the Core.   
  
"**_MINE!!!_**"   
  
The Breaker threw every ounce of its weight and power behind the remaining clawblades and the shield they projected, eyes literally burning with blue energy that fogged away into the air. Footlocks clamped down and the Hellwalker`s front right foot gave at least, damage layering onto damage in an impossible display of humanity`s technology mastery toppling forward on the last step before it would`ve been able to bite the Geno into mutilated chunks.   
  
_ "**AHHHHHHHHH!!!**"   
  
_ It was a scream heard and felt by anyone within a hundred miles who was even remotely telepathic. It made Bill Chapman`s head ache, it awoke Katherine Takahori out of a sound sleep, causing several people in the former Blitz Team base to erupt into screams of their own, or simply wince in unexpected pain.   
  
With a shockwave of pressure, dust and debris, the Hellwalker hit the ground, yet its own weight and momentum forced it onward, skidding towards the Geno Breaker for a few short seconds before the smaller Zoid`s boosters kicked on. The shield met the armored snout and metal that could`ve taken a nuclear bomb crumpled like tin foil, rupturing in an instant, while the lower jaw snapped off just moments before.   
  
Like a tide of once invicible metal, the Walker`s body continued onward, sliding like a dead snake down a hill in the middle of a landslide, yet the Breaker held its ground, and the shield stayed steady, punching through ton after ton of armor and internal circuitry. Guns fired, the shield broke the barrier into the primary Core chamber and the already dying beast tried to writhe out a series of death throes, only continue skidding along.   
  
A leg broke off, the Shadow Fox yelped and fell, hitting the ground with a roll and instantly suffering a complete command system freeze as energy drain and the fresh loss of a limb finally did in the stubborn dog. Its leg remained in place though, sliding closer and closer until the still bright golden glow of its claws slid into the secondary Core chamber, piercing into the actual Core itself after several seconds.   
  
Another scream echoed through Bill Chapman`s mind. It was primal, desperate, the scream of a beast whose time had come. Henry the Hellwalker died with that scream, the chance to find salvation elsewhere was born with it.   
  
The shield stabbed into the base of the now limp tail, tearing through the third and final Core chamber as the footlocks broke. The Geno Breaker literally swam upwards within the confines of the Hellwalker`s _still _skidding body, finally tearing out through top armor of the tail, just as the shield overloaded and blew out, severing the second clawshield in an instant and sending it spinning through the air, where it stabbed into the ground and stayed there.   
  
The Breaker landed on both feet, stumbled a few steps and regained its balance, the killing spike flipping back and the beaten Zoid turning with a jerk to watch as the Shadow Fox flipped through the air and crashed back down, narrowly dodging the slowing body of the dead Demon.   
  
"Rest in peace, you sorry bastard," Bill let out with a wheeze, letting his head hang down before reaching up and using a leather sleeve to wipe the virtual gallon of sweat from his face.   
  
The Hellwalker`s dead body finally came to a complete stop.   
  
It was over.   
  
Somewhere in the back of his thoughts, a delirious Marcus Harlock could swear he heard a gruff, country accented chuckle, topped off to the background growls of a Rev Raptor.   
  
_

End Chapter Thirty-Five

_  
  


* * *

  
  
**Author`s Note:** Say it with me now: **HOLY SHIT!** *Dies.*  
  
Oh, and if anyone`s wondering, the Stopgap is just an accelerated healing system that can repair damage to a **very** minor degree(such as overheated/overloaded stabilizers) in a matter of minutes. It`s literally just that though - a stopgap. It can`t fully fix a Zoid up.  
  
**Akino Ame:** Well, we had **one** casualty, but it wasn`t one of the Big Four that I`ve got planned. Either way, you have no idea how much I enjoy torturing my readers. *Hands Akino a cookie for having read all of ROC in three days.* Congrats. You`re insane :P As for the missing characters... Well, they`re basically going to be the friggin` focal point of at least the first few chapters of TOD, if not more(minus the Renegade Mad Scientists we all know and ph33r). Suffice to say, **everyone** has a fate. Even Leyla. As for the final chapter of ROC...  
  
I just hope my fingertips don`t go numb HTMLing it. Agh.  
  
Also glad you liked the turn-serious.  
  
Oh, and remember that mail you sent me on the alternate descendent theories? Sorry about the lack of a reply, I just got caught up in stuff and by the time I was freed up, it was a wee bit too late since AOhelL mail had thrown it out for being over seven days old. That said: Most of them were actually quite plausible after I put some thought into them.  
  
**The Big Fisch:** Mark may`ve turned more serious than he had been, but it hasn`t really set in with his fighting style yet. I`m also glad you enjoyed the confession scene, as I`d been wanting to write that for a **while** now. Hopefully his seriousness actually showed through in this chapter, and if it didn`t... Well, I`ve got a flashback planned in the next one to help ease it along. And yeah, the Rommel Brothers are actually normal, once you get past the insane wealth, the luxury lifestyle, the seemingly genetic tendency to want to blow up the planet...  
  
**Illidan:** If you thought Bill kicked ass in the last chapter, here`s hoping he knocked you on the floor and burned down your house in this one :P And yes, MyRiese is quite a bitch. She`s **Queen** Bitch, in fact, and I`m proud to say that. As for the Harry water scene...  
  
It`s **Harry and Leena** for god`s sake. At least she didn`t **shoot him** this time, right? XD And yes, that 'voice' belonged to the kid. From now on though, anything ominously involving him will not be hinted at by me. I intend on mindfucking you all to hell with that kid when he gets older.  
  
And it`s Tides of Darkness. I think I said it somewhere, I dunno.  
  
**Rhade:** Long time no see! How ya been?  
  
And how did you like how I pulled the Suicide Crew`s sorry collective ass outta the fire this time? XD  
  
**This Guy:** Rest assured, I`m a guy :P And yes, I do feel special. Every review I get makes me feel special because I don`t get showered by countless reviewers like some authors do. I`m proud to say my readers(especially those who review or even just send me mails) are loyal folks with taste, intelligence and a good sense of humor. Especially since they haven`t lynched me for torturing them like I do XD  
  
And if it makes any difference, once I finish Zoids, I actually intend to take a shot at going pro :P  
  
**Chaotic-Swordsman-Brad:** Your longer review didn`t make it onto the list, but thanks for putting time and effort into it anyway. I`m also glad you still like things so far, hopefully this chapter further 03n3d ROC into the record books.  
  
**Vega Obscura the King:** I`d bet anyone with control over the Micro-Sworder hivemind would do the same thing Vega did XD You`re also as insane as Akino for reading that much in 4-5 hours. If not more so. *Hands Vega a cookie or two.* O_o;  
  
And if you think I`ve commited numerous AHBLings all through NA/ROC before, wait`ll ya see the shit I got planned for TOD... *Cackles like a deranged lunatic.* And glad you understood the L33t Sp34k. I was actually somewhat hesitant to use it at the start, didn`t know how many of my readers understood it, but it seems to`ve gone over pretty well, I`d say...  
  
And yes. Borealis is not your daddy`s Organoid.  
  
With all that said, we come to a rather obvious announcement:**_ THERE IS ONLY ONE CHAPTER LEFT FOR REIGN OF CHAOS!_**  
  
Hopefully, it`ll at least keep at my 90kb lower limit for these past few chapters... I don`t know if I can keep raising the fecking bar like this every damn time I post x_x  
  
That said, read, review, enjoy, Sh33p out and see ya next time!  
_*Dies._


	36. Exodus

  
  
**Foreword:** Soundtrack below.  
  
**Scene One:** Trigun - Fool`s Paradise   
**G Gundam - Intense Battle**(**OR** Rurouni Kenshin - The Last Wolf Suite)  
**Scene Two:** Zoids - Provocation  
**Scene Three:** Hack Sign - Key of the Twilight  
**Scene Four:** Rammstein - Engel  
**Scene Five:** Inuyasha - Demon Exterminator Sango  
**Scene Six:** Hack Sign - In The Land of Twilight  
**Scene Seven:** Zoids - Childhood Memories  
**Scene Eight:** Trigun - Never Could Have Been Worse  
**Scene Nine:** Zoids - Any End of the Land  
**Scene Ten:** Killswitch Engage - One Last Sunset  
**Scene Eleven:** Trigun - Zero Hour  
**Scene Twelve:** Zoids - Wailing Steel(**OR** Spineshank - Beginning of the End)  
  


* * *

  
  


** Reign of Chaos**  
Exodus   
  


In the middle of the desert, the broken cockpit hatch of a Zoid that had originally been black and gold, now a monotone stain of brown and orange from sand, clay and dirt, flipped open.   
  
** [**_Glassteel slagged under one last punishing blow, the Shadow Fox`s right front leg embedded itself into the Hellwalker`s right eye, holding steady and strong even as sparks hosed out of every stabilizer on its body, the laser vulcan finally spinning out and overheating before built-in safety measures caused it to completely stop firing.   
  
Marcus Harlock let out a desperate yell.   
  
"What the hell are you doing?! **MOVE!**"   
  
"No," came a disturbingly simple, calmly given reply. It was the kind of tone that sent chills down your spine and stripped away any sense of surrender from anyone or anything. For Bill Chapman, there was no surrender, there would be no retreat. He was going into the fire without budging an inch to actually do it, putting his own survival into what could only be described as a point of no return. If he failed in whatever he had planned, he was going to die. If he succeeded in whatever he had planned, he was probably still going to die.   
  
That was the kind of thing that either motivated you or terrified you, depending on your state of mind, and right now, Mark wasn`t going on his usual mixture of adrenaline and lunacy. He had run out of adrenaline sometime after the Shadow Fox had latched itself onto one of the Hellwalker`s eyes, and lunacy had gone down the drain not long after that.   
  
As such, he wasn`t really able to do anything but become even more desperate than he already was. With the Fox knowingly holding itself in place by only one clawed foot, he drew back its other limb and spoke up, voice only a few steps shy of a whisper.   
  
"Transfer all remaining energy into the other claw, Fox. Let`s lobotomize this mother fucker..."   
  
No apathetically precise text rolled across the lower console, no epically synthesized shriek of battle and no on-the-fly surprises from the Zoid. It just did as told, lower legs going limp, the laser vulcan completely losing power and even the eyes dimming as the remaining claw lit up like a sharpened, reshaped star, glowing golden with such intensity that excess energy literally burnt into the air around it and formed a neon yellow mist around it.   
  
"**GET OUT OF THERE!**"   
  
Two attacks followed almost at the exact same instant, coming down to the milliseconds as a 150mm, armor piercing slug blared over the Fox`s left shoulder, plowing into the gap in the eye that the claws had already carved out. A missile was right behind it, little more than a magnite rod with a pointed tip and a rocket on its back, spinning in after the bullet and stabbing into the remaining material of the eye, which in turn caused a small explosion to tear a path right to the core chamber, gigantic as it was..   
  
"We all have choices," he heard Bill mutter out, though he only barely paid attention to it. The Fox`s front left leg trembled, sparks blazed out of its stabilizers as the right gave a having pull.   
  
"This..."   
  
There was a clear opening, just wide and tall enough for the Shadow Fox`s whole leg to fit into, leading all the way to the core itself.   
  
"**Is**..."   
  
Hesitation vanished, desperation turned into resolve and action - the Shadow Fox threw every ounce of its weight behind the Strike Laser Claw, thrusting it like a burning rapier into the gap in the Hellwalker`s eye, slagging bits of glassteel and internal metals at the same time.   
  
"**MINE!!!**"   
  
Chapman screamed, Mark paid him no mind this time, letting out a grit yell of his own as the Fox slammed to a halt with enough force to jar him forward and sling sweat from his face onto the console in front of him, the harness straps stretching to their limit while the canine Zoid let out a howl of indignance, buried up to its shoulder in the Walker`s eye. The Strike Laser Claw slapped against the Core chamber`s shell, shattering a hole into it and spraying instantly molten debris across the secondary Core itself.   
  
The Walker shrieked in pain, the last threads of resillience finally snapping in its right wrist as the foot completely gave out, sending it crashing all the way to the ground with a titanic blast of pressure and dust, the kind that could blanket city blocks in darkness for minutes on end and shatter glass for a mile in every direction. Mark felt his heart skip three beats in a row, the breath was forced out of his lungs and the impact threw him to his left. The straps continued to stretch to their absolute limit before yanking him back, his shoulder smacking off of a side panel in the process. He bit back a grunt from the pain, sliding into place and tensing all over while the colossus started to slide, its lower jaw breaking off somewhere along the way.   
  
[**WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! STRUCTURAL FAILURE IMMINENT! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!**]   
  
The message flashed across his screen, but he didn`t even read it. His heart pounded back with a vengeance, lodging itself into his throat several times over as he felt metal buckling from left to right.   
  
"**THIS ONE`S FOR YOU, BECK!**" He managed to scream out, **willing** the Shadow Fox`s front right leg to action and forcing it to straighten out in such a way that the left front was left in place, literally snapping off like a twig. The Zoid let out a strangled yelp, willingly losing the limb with a sense of glee that its pilot could almost feel, energy automatically redirecting from the lost leg into the others.   
  
The lost leg slid the rest of the way, slowly but surely plopping onto the Walker`s deformed secondary Core and burning it to death over the course of several agonizing seconds. A triple kick followed, the Fox heaved itself away and hit the ground with a crumple of plating all across its side, rolling limply while its command system suffered an instant freeze.   
  
Mark held his breath, shut his eyes and weighted for the end, pushing himself back into his seat and doing his damndest to stay there. The Zoid hit a bump, bounced up and hit the ground again, skidding along next to the Hellwalker, but right in the path of the Demon`s shoulder._**]**   
  
Dust still choked the air, the sound of a soft thump into the sand was only barely audible over everything else.   
  
** [**_"Awww f-" He never finished the curse, eyes diverting from the incoming shoulder as his senses registered a movement right in front of him.   
  
A few seconds later, Bill Chapman looked back to see the Shadow Fox, sparks flying from its cheek, flip through the air close to a half dozen times and crash back down, missing the dead Walker`s shoulder and body by critical yards, hitting the ground with another skid, which in turn kicked up its own small dust trail, though that was promptly blown away by the cloud thrown by the Hellwalker._**]   
  
** The Fox let out a groan, underscored by the exhausted laugh of a young man, laying on the sand with arms and legs spread in every direction, breathing raspily and smiling like a raging idiot.   
  
"... You... You... You son of a bitch," he managed to sputter out before breaking out into a coughing laugh and starting to sit upright on a sore arm, blue eyes glancing towards the downed Zoid to his right. The armor all along its body had been beaten and dirtied, but only one particular injury stood out, a single mark that defied logical explanation and normal reasoning.   
  
It was a gigantic dent that perfectly fit the shape of the largest toe on a Rev Raptor`s foot.   
  
"Saved my ass _again_!"   
  
"Chapman? You there?" Pierce`s voice sounded, a bit scratchy because of the static currently reigning supreme over virtually every frequency he could tune into. The Breaker`s communications equipment hadn`t exactly gone unscathed during the battle.   
  
"Yeah. I`m alive."   
  
A layer of uncertainty seemed to lift from her voice in the form of a sigh of relief, but another remained as the Sworder, still holding up the clip-winged Raynos JT, flew overhead, the other Zoid trailing smoke from where its wings had once been. If Jamie was even conscious, he was silent, either with his radio off or just wanting to gather his wits. Bill honestly couldn`t blame him.   
  
"What about Mark? Is he okay?" Pierce asked, her tone resembling that of an older sister worried about a younger sibling more than any sort of worry for someone who was just a friend. She had finally allowed her attitude level to drop a few notches, but then again, who wouldn`t? Bill couldn`t blame her for that either.   
  
"Yeah, his Zoid wasn`t pulped. I`m gonna go check up on `im, but we`re both gonna need a tow back outta here before I can even _think_ of trying to repair the damage we`ve all been hit with," he finally replied after a few seconds, literally having to pry his hands from the controls so that he could reach down and start to undo his harness.   
  
"I got that. It`ll take my Gustav a while to get out here, probably even longer since I gotta drop clipper here off at the base, but I`ll be back in an hour or two, tops," Pierce said, and quite obviously _meant_ it. The Sworder swung around in a wide turn back towards the base, dragging the Raynos along with it. "Good job, Chapman."   
  
And with that, the Storm Sworder and the JT hurtled off towards the base at just over half the speed of sound. Bill didn`t doubt that Pierce would make good on her word, simply nodding exhaustedly towards her audio messaging and then flipping the radio off. With a single clip, four of the five buckles on the harness zipped back into their ready points, while the fifth allowed the lock to simple flop against his thighs. The cockpit`s hatch flipped open not long after that, and the flight chair, along with the forward console, promptly slid down on a rail towards the ground, where it stopped just inches shy of hitting the dirt.   
  
"That`ll be all for now, pal," he said, climbing out of the seat with cramped legs and a tired body, his mind bruised where his skin wasn`t. "Take a nap, I`ll fix you up as soon as we get back to the Farm, `kay?" He asked, taking a worn glance over his shoulder.   
  
The Zoid issued a low rumble in acknowledgement, drawing the chair and console back in, then shutting the cockpit off once more. At that, the optics ceased to glow and the huge, battered, triumphant war machine known as the Blue Geno Breaker fell over onto its left side and front, then limply rolled entirely onto the side, jaw hanging open while whisps of smoke trailed up from just about every part of its body, head, legs, arms and tail, from vents to thrusters to its blown out charged particle cannon. The only real, evolved weapon the beast had left was its killing spike, and even that looked as if it had seen better days.   
  
With that out of the way, Bill let off a tired smirk and reached up, pulling the jacket off and bundling it up under one arm, removing his gloves and sticking them into one of its pockets and looking away. Neon blue eyes narrowed briefly at the sight of the dead giant that lay so close, yet imposingly so very far away at the same time, its neck curled and broken bodyparts lying all over the place. Panels of armor that had broken off, a tooth that was probably twice as long as a Gojulas was tall, and just as thick, parts of guns...   
  
But those were only barely noticable background pieces compared to the dead Hellwalker itself. The Cores, all three of them, had been taken out, one by one. Bill knew he had offed two of them - the second had been close enough to where he was that the chamber had broken and flames, debris and shock had burned, stabbed and fried it to death, the third had crashed right into his half-shield finisher and found itself pulped, burned and torn apart all at the same time.   
  
The Core that acted as the primary brain though, that had been Mark`s doing. Bill didn`t know much about Zoid physiology, but he`d known of the theory behind Zoids with multiple Cores - it had been one of Sloan Tendro`s favorite topics. Even though almost no one ever admitted to listening to him blab about it.   
  
If only one or even two of the Cores were taken out, the Zoid would be crippled, but only for the amount of time it would take for the surviving Core or Cores to revive them, almost like copping out and turning an actual Core into an substitute Organoid. If not for Mark taking out the Core in the head, and if not for Pierce and Jamie blowing out the way for him to finish doing so, the Hellwalker would`ve still been functional, at least functional enough that it could`ve continued fighting as nothing but a stationary fortress. It would`ve eventually healed too, and probably come back even stronger than before since Henry would`ve reprogrammed it once again.   
  
Now though, the Walker lay, dead as a three mile long doorknob. Its corpse held a certain... Fallen majesty to it though, one that only brought a sense of mourning from Bill. Not the mourning of respect, or even guilt that he`d helped to kill something so glorious - however horrible that glory had been - but the mourning of a fallen relative. He`d never really known Henry Rommel, only seen him a few times, maybe sensed emotions from a distance, but there was something that nagged at him about the other.   
  
They`d been alike. Maybe not in the ways that could`ve kept them from slugging it out to the bitter end with one another, but they`d still been alike. Both were humans, yet not. Both had been completely alone in the world, with only their Zoids as companions. Even among human allies, Bill still felt alone because not one of them had the same glowing eyes or the same ability to interact with the Zoids that he did. Henry hadn`t just had the ability to interact with them on such a personal level, he`d _become_ one himself.   
  
** [**_"I wouldn`t **just** be piloting him."_**]**   
  
_ "I guess in the end, I was still the only one even when he **was** alive."   
  
_ A deep breath filtered into his lungs as the dust began to clear, the heat of the morning sun itched at his skin, yet did little to gain his attention.   
  
"We may`ve been alike, Henry," he thought aloud, starting to walk towards where the distant lump of brown was situated, the same lump that the Shadow Fox had become. "But not alike enough. I`m sorry you turned out the way you did, but I hope you can find some kind of peace in death," he admitted, hearing the all too close, yet still distant sounds of the Hellwalker slowly beginning to stone over like so many dead Zoids did when their Cores were destroyed.   
  
"I`m impressed," the boy said with a tone as bland as a disinterested film critic at a romance movie, finally lowering the binoculars a second time as Abbie glanced down at him from where she`d been frantically pacing around, debating on whether or not to hijack a Gustav and drive out there herself.   
  
"_What happened_?" She asked, voice taut and weary, eyes looking as if they were on the verge of spilling over with tears. This was _not_ the kind of woman who could keep up a life of waiting on a man to either live or die, not like this. Not without _knowing_ what was going on. It had been hard enough leaving Farentown behind as it`d burned down to the ground, it`d been just as hard dealing with the sudden loss of a man who`d had a seeming _barrier_ of invincibility around him, but it`d been hardest to find out that Mark had apparently left to fight the damn thing _again_ without saying a good-bye.   
  
Although she couldn`t quite explain how she`d ended up waking up with his baseball cap in her hand, but that really wasn`t the point.   
  
"The good guys won. Even more impressive is that nobody died," he pointed out after a few choice seconds of delay, only to speak again after another moment, "Except for the one who was supposed to."   
  
A few more seconds ticked by, and the tension and stress level in the hangar dropped like a rock off a cliff, hitting the surface of the nonexistent water and sinking into bliss and joy in an instant. While the child known as Alistair Edward Smith seemed completely unphased by all that had just happened, the woman known as Abigail Summers was jumping up and down and shouting out in similar fashion to a depraved fangirl.   
  
"Crazy freak," the kid finally mumbled out, slowly turning away and chucking the binoculars over to his apparent adoptive mother, who caught them without even realizing it for the first few seconds.   
  
"Where are you going?" She asked, hearing the coming howl of a jet engine running at less than half power.   
  
"Back to bed, all of this is too much excitement for my fragile young mind."   
  
If sarcasm had an avatar in reality, it would`ve been the boy who promptly exited the hangar, stepping through the doors into the hallway and vanishing from sight entirely. For a few more moments after that, Abbie was silent, simply staring in the direction the kid had waltzed off in without a word. With that out of the way though, she shook her head, turned back around, raised the binoculars and let out an impish grin that could`ve given diabetes to Gunther Prozen. _After_ he`d been partially absorbed by a Death Saurer`s Zoid Core.   
  
The Storm Sworder and the broken down form of some kind of warped Raynos were already starting to make the descent towards landing on the concrete-covered ground in front of the base. Abbie couldn`t _help_ but feel giddy right about now.   
  
** Wake up.   
  
** There was the mental equivelent of what felt like icewater being dumped onto one`s crotch before a strangled yelp cracked through the confines of the Liger Zero`s cockpit, finally rousing one sleep addicted Bit Cloud out of what had probably seemed like a coma without the life support. Or the doctors. Or the nurses clad in exceedingly skimpy clothing...   
  
"Bfhth... Right when it was just gettin` good," the blonde sputtered out belatedly, literally wide awake with such a burst of energy that he didn`t even feel the need to yawn, stretch, belch, fart, scratch or snuggle further into the seat, or any of the other Bitly™ things that he usually did when he`d slept too long. In this case, that had been something on the order of twenty or more hours spent sleeping like a rock, which was the obvious reason for the streak of drool running down from the left side of his mouth - promptly wiped away on the back of one dirty leather glove.   
  
** I honestly do not know how you humans can have such long dreams about one subject**, Roc commented, and though Bit presently wasn`t able to see it, the great First Born shook his crested head in the process.   
  
"... I`d explain, but I get the feeling you wouldn`t understand."   
  
A few seconds ticked by as the Liger pilot tapped a finger to his temple and tried to make mental contact with Zeke. As had been the case when he`d last been awake, the Organoid was still unconscious, and its permanently fused body clung to the core of the Liger Zero more like a dead fungus trying to hold onto the base of a tree than anything else.   
  
"You sure he`s not dead?" Bit asked with some audible concern, though one would have to be telepathic to pick up on the thick, unending layers of anxiety hidden beneath his voice. He had, both knowingly and unknowingly, bound himself so tightly to Zeke that he was probably as close to the Organoid than Van and Fiona had been, if not more so. Losing Zeke would`ve been like losing a twin brother or something, maybe even worse.   
  
** If he was dead, his body would have fossilized and transfered out of the Liger Zero by now. He is alive, merely resting and gathering strength,** Roc answered.** Now unblind yourself. You must see, with open eyes, that which has transpired while you were asleep.   
  
** "... Unblind myself?" Bit asked annoyedly, still having trouble speaking with Roc, and Madison, when she`d been around, due to how the Ancient tended to speak in near-riddle or half-truths that weren`t also half-lies, critical gaps always appearing here and there. Just trying to get directions to a _battle_ was hard enough, trying to get actual _conversation_ out of the great chimera was like trying to chat it up with a brick wall and an escaped mental patient that knew everything except how to explain it.   
  
Although the brick wall and the mental patient probably would`ve been friendlier.   
  
** ... Shake the Liger`s head. Since it has been standing still for so long, its sight has been blinded by Hell`s snow.   
  
** "... Ah. Well, I feel like a dumbass," Bit replied, grasping the controls and then coaxing the Liger out of a standstill, getting the Zoid to actually stretch this way and that before shaking the pounds of snow, ash and general grim off of its once stylishly black-and-white head. Almost instantly, once the Zoid`s optics were properly cleared, Bit`s jaw practically came unhinged.   
  
"What the _hell_?"   
  
His eyes had been greeted with a sight that simply didn`t fit in with what he was used to when it came to Nyx. Gone was the thick, naturally polluted air, countless tons of ash and snow no longer spewing down from the solid black clouds above, which now seemed almost broodingly calm, their outward facade occasionally broken by shocks of cloud-to-cloud lightning, bursting into view like the outlines of grinning, inhuman faces. The ground remained covered though, coated in a hardening slosh composed of millions of tons of snow and ash, mixed into a monotone gray across the landscape.   
  
Still, things remained. The glowing crystals that permeated the continent, ranging from irradiated magnite to unknown materials all together, still stood tall and imposing, virtually every one glowing a different color from the last, and all of them exposed by the simple fact that any snow or ash had been melted off due to surface heat. The mountains and ridges that were placed in a seemingly random pattern around the mesa still stood, although it now seemed as if every river of lava and every screaming volcano had been silenced, though whisps of smoke could still be seen in what was now more of an afternoon twilight than an early evening one, while the gigantic bulge that trailed all the way into the distant remains of the city that housed that eerie blood red glow, as if it were a miniature sun in its own right.   
  
"... Did everything just _stop_?" Bit asked, staring blankly at the display all around he and the Liger.   
  
** No**, Roc answered, stepping by with an eerily silent pace towards the edge of the mesa, red-and-blue optics seeming to narrow in the direction of the far off, but no less visible Dome, situated miles away. Like an unnatural scar in a surreal depiction of Hell, something there seemed to be echoing a challenge. Distant movements stirred so subtly that the human eye shouldn`t have been able to catch them, yet did.   
  
** It is finally about to begin. For the first time in centuries, something terrible is going to happen.   
  
** "What is?" The blonde asked again, just as the Liger moved of its own accord and came to stand next to the larger, more majestic Roc, shaking off a few more tons of grime with every step it took. "And what`s gonna happen that`s so terrible?" He added almost as an afterthought.   
  
** The Sleepers are going to awaken, and find that they are strong...   
  
**   
The cockpit flipped open with a gasp of air, Jamie undid his harness and started to climb out, only to pause and glance as far back as he could. The Sworder had been forced to literally drop him onto the concrete during the landing, and as a result, the Raynos`d skidded along for several dozen yards before slowing to a dead stop, partially on its side, partially on its feet and partially on the side of its mouth at the same time, having left behind a long, black stain along the once smooth pavement.   
  
_ "Any landing you can walk away from,"_ he reminded himself in Will`s place, finally shaking his head and finishing the climb back down. It was somewhat awkward, given the way the Raynos` head was tilted, but he managed it, sitting down on the rim of the cockpit and then just dropping a few feet to the ground. He landed somewhat stiffly, a sharp contrast to the almost relaxed way in which the Sworder`s cockpit lowered open and Pierce practically jumped down.   
  
One green haired woman landed in a crouch, another let out a yell of what could loosely be placed somewhere between enthusiasm and joy, both ended up crashing into each other in the way that only siblings really could. The shorter of the two had jumped, the taller had stumbled a bit and caught her, both were now hugging as if they`d each survived a pocket apocalypse.   
  
"I was _so worried_!"   
  
Some babble.   
  
"Mark is fine - you should`ve _seen_ the way that Chapman took that thing out!"   
  
More incoherent sister-to-sister rambling.   
  
"**_HE WHAT?! _**How the hell could _my Markie_ put himself in danger like that?!"   
  
A bit of fangirlism followed.   
  
"And **_THEN_**-"   
  
Jamie almost felt as if his _brain_ was starting to leak out of his ears, finally turning around in time to watch the two holding hands and jumping up and down in typical bouncy anime chick fashion, complete with big, bright smiles, flowing hair, jiggling body parts and enough estrogen to cause the manliest of conversations to turn to such fine things as knitting, and the color pink...   
  
"... I need a shower," he mumbled out, glad to be ignored as he walked by, shoulders slumped in exhaustion and perhaps even a small shred of defeat. Sure, he`d _helped_ to take the Walker down, but he hadn`t been nearly as significant as Mark or Bill had. Neither had Pierce for that matter, though she didn`t seem to give much of a damn.   
  
** [**"I guess there`re worse ways to die..."**]**   
  
A hand went up to slap his own forehead as he managed to get past the two-strong row of trailered Gustavs, one of them still holding a rather shot up looking Blade Liger.   
  
It stopped almost the instant he felt a leather clad arm with a surprising amount of muscle swing around his neck and yank him back, up, and right off the ground, gloved knuckles grinding like sand paper into his scalp as a pair of rather large, pillowy things smushed up against the back of his neck and shoulders.   
  
"Now, now, didn`t think we`d _forgotten ya_, did you?" Pierce asked with a grin so shitfaced it would`ve made the smuggest of tyrants weep with envy, comparable to the psychotic looks of pleasure that Leena Tauros could get when she was about to shoot something. Minus the little violent twinkle in the eyes, the one that said 'this is going to _hurt_.' Now, Jamie being... Well, _Jamie_, would`ve tried to struggle free or something to that effect, maybe kick his legs around, flail a bit, perhaps even yell to be let go of.   
  
And then _Abbie`s_ small-but-well-endowed self had hugged him too. Around the waist this time. With her chest mushed up against him, practically one step shy of tearing loose of her shirt.   
  
"You did _great_!"   
  
_ "Make that a cold shower..."   
  
Squeeze_!   
  
_ "**COLD! VERYVERYCOLD!!!**"   
  
_ After a few seconds though, along with a pair of lipstick smudges to one cheek, he`d been released from the great Green Haired Prison of Osojiggleh Doom, left to stumble along on his way as the sisters wandered towards Pierce`s Gustav. Suffice to say, by the time he made his way into the hallway, Jamie Hameros` face was colored so red that the lipstick smudges didn`t even show up, though were he in a right state of mind, he`d`ve probably made a decree to never wash his face again.   
  
_ Ever.   
  
_ As it stood though, he simply walked along, until he found himself standing back between the rows of people, numbering in the dozens, who he had helped to save. For a few moments, it still seemed as if no one had noticed him, save for the single black haired man standing directly in his path.   
  
It was Terry.   
  
He was smiling, and that gold plated tooth was practically glowing right along with it.   
  
And a few seconds later, other people had started to look up and smile too. Reality dawned in the moments it took them to realize that one of their would-be protectors, at _least _one of them, had come back alive, looking almost as if the only thing that had even done any damage to him was the stress of battle. If _anyone_ came back alive after going to fight _that_ thing, and if they had taken so long to do it, surely that meant that the Demon was dead. There just wasn`t any other logic any of them could accept right now.   
  
Luckily for them, they were right.   
  
Dopishly and with embarrassment to be the center of attention once again, Jamie smiled almost impishly back at them all, placing a hand up to rub at the back of his head and then flagging a victory sign in Terry`s direction. Soon enough, people had started standing, and when they did, they`d started clapping, and cheering.   
  
They had hope again. Their lives had been destroyed, but they had hope, and that was all they really needed anymore. For the first time in his life, Jamie Hameros understood that, and he understood that he had been a part of something epic and great - something _good_.   
  
The shameful embarrassment slowly faded away, replaced by laughter and a sense of pride. Things were finally starting to look up.   
  
The mechanical sound of a strangled beast ticked through his ears, the cockpit was almost unfamiliar after having spent so long outside of it. Still, there was something about it that dashed hesitation, a comforting presence in the back of his thoughts and emotions that couldn`t quite be described, yet was easily recognized nonetheless. His body jerked forward just barely, his sight struggled to stay focus and his mind battled to keep from slipping into the frenzied stream of live, up to the second information, ranging from the weather in Champton to the recent defeat of the Hellwalker near what had once been Farentown.   
  
It was overwhelming enough that most grown men and women would`ve collapsed into a blissful state of information overload, which would`ve then driven them completely insane as their very minds were destroyed by the onslaught of data.   
  
Vega Obscura was adapting though, and he had help.   
  
** Just stay focused, you`ll be able to control them properly soon enough.   
  
**_ "I wasn`t having this problem before," _he pointed out blandly, still having to grit his teeth once in a while. The naked Fury rumbled a bit, slowly starting to inch forward without even moving at all - the work of the changeable armor system, no doubt.   
  
** Before, you weren`t having to multitask between piloting, being fully bonded to me and maintaining your own sense of self-awareness. You were also being pulled into random trances. It`s hard now, and it probably will be for a long time, but you`ll get the hang of it**, Specular replied with a projection of comfort and the notion of a pat on the back. She stood outside the Zoid, at the very end of the CAS rails.   
  
"I guess I don`t need to tell you that we`re in range, do I?" Lars asked, his face popped up in a window on the main console, just to Vega`s right. He paid it little attention, reaching up with a gloved hand to wipe the sweat away from his face.   
  
"Hook me up with the Fury`s base armor," he finally ordered after a few seconds, feeling his heart skip a beat in the process.   
  
It was all starting to come full circle.   
  
"Right... Activating Berserk Fury CAS... _Now_."   
  
The armorless Fury came to a total stop after several seconds, limbs all pointing themselves into a neutral position as the equip-arms started to move, each one prying a piece of silvery armor from the walls and the ceiling, then slapping it into place. Magnetic locks did the rest, and piece by piece, the original form of the former Ultimate X Fury vanished, giving rise to a complete rebirth of a beast that had terrorized the previous Royal Cup.   
  
_ "Bit`s walking right into a trap,"_ he pointed out at last, glancing to the side opposite of Lars` window.   
  
Shoulder panels locked into place.   
  
** And he knows it. I wouldn`t expect any less from someone who can count Van Fleiheit as an ancestor.   
  
** Hip and thigh armor clasped on, where before, there had been none.   
  
_ "What do you mean?"   
  
_ Zoid-sized boots, complete with footlocks, slid onto the Fury`s feet, clamping into place.   
  
** They all have a subconscious death wish and just can`t wait to carry it out**, came the sardonic answer, only _partially _joking. **Really, why else would that twit have lunged into a charged particle beam as it fired?**   
  
The backpack followed, Buster Claw arms held in neutral while the tail and chest plates were all smacked onto the Fury`s body, followed by more and more plates, panels and joint covers. Boosters finished things off, yet one part remained.   
  
_ "... Got a point there, actually,"_ Vega replied with a barely suppressed snicker. The events of the climactic final battle of the Royal Cup were still things he couldn`t quite remember, at least not after he`d been knocked unconscious until the very end of the fighting.   
  
"Berserk Fury..." Lars` voice rang back into Vega`s ears as the last pieces of armor began to approach. Within seconds, the Zoid`s blocky head became sleek, angular and almost demonic, yet topped off its equally knightly appearance, coloring the black head to match the rest of the now silvery lavender-and-white body.   
  
"CAS complete."   
  
Red optics lit up as an earth shaking roar blew through the confines of the Foe Hammer`s hangar, just before the reborn Berserk Fury was slid forward. Specular stood waiting for a few seconds longer, only to fade a completely solid neon blue and streak into the metal tyrannosaur`s body with a crack of what almost sounded like thunder. Red became blue, reigns became easier to keep a hold on and Vega took a deep breath.   
  
The launch rail - and with it, the Fury - lowered down into position, electricity volting all over the place as the Foe Hammer came to a near stop, still holding steady several hundred feet from the water`s surface, at least a quarter of a mile from the coast of Hell itself.   
  
"_Mobilize_!" Vega finally shouted out, feeling the heavy vest he wore shift against his body, in much the same away as his body shifted against the seat, pressing back. Lightning flared around the Zoid, which blasted forward at several hundred miles per hour with the sound of a gigantic gunshot, streaking over the waters in a steady descent towards the ground.   
  
"Good luck, Vega, I`ll-" Comms blurred into static as the Fury hit a wall of previously unseen, undetected energy, plowing right through it as if it were water and hitting the ground as boosters flipped open and leg jets kicked into high gear. The Zoid`s entire backside practically turned into a fireball with a tail on it within a few seconds, propelled forward at a few hundred miles per hour.   
  
Swiftly, the Foe Hammer banked to a mid-air stop, and a quarter of a mile from Nyx, Lars Torson let out a string of curses, almost flying out of his seat and into a console in the process.   
  
The wall the Fury had hit and passed through hadn`t been a fluke.   
  
It was a Rare Hertz.   
  
Out in the middle of the open desert between the Blitz Team base and what had once been Farentown, one man came to a standstill while another sat, propped back against the snout of the unconscious Shadow Fox, both looking as if they`d just walked through Hell and come out only slightly worse for wear in the process. One was covered in dust and dirt, the other simply looked as if he`d walked a country mile after running a marathon.   
  
Unsurprisingly, both felt about as crappy as they appeared.   
  
"You`re looking thoughtful," Bill Chapman finally pointed out, still holding his jacket and gloves under one arm.   
  
"How long ya think it`ll take for it to stone over?" Marcus Harlock asked out of the blue, completely ignoring the previous words as if they`d never been spoken at all. He was staring at the dead form of the Hellwalker as if it were the only thing that even stood out amongst the bland, mostly flattened landscape of the desert.   
  
"I don`t know," Bill answered, his own attentions also focused on how the Demon was still fossilizing. It had been over an hour since the battle had ended, yet the dead beast _still_ hadn`t finished going through the strange process of turning to stone. Its tail, part of its lower body and what remained of the head and upper neck were all completely fossilized by now, and out of sight, Chapman was willing to bet money that the insides near the primary Core`s location had already finished shifting to stone. "It should be over by tonight, I guess."   
  
There was a brief pause, underscored by the cracking sounds of the metal turning to stone. How Zoids could sometimes do this was still a mystery, and even after over four hundred _years_ of study, only the basics of _why_ they did it were understood. Finally though, Bill spoke up again.   
  
"Been a wild day, huh?"   
  
"I just wanna sleep..."   
  
"Why`s that?" Bill asked, somewhat clueless that Mark hadn`t exactly slept since yesterday.   
  
"Haven`t slept in two days... Last night`s startin` to become just a blur with a few things standing out... This mornin` seems like a dream and I think my dead uncle saved my ass _again_ at the end of the battle," the weary Shadow Fox pilot answered after a few seconds, bringing both hands up to rub tiredly at his eyes.   
  
"... Sounds like you`ve had a fun few days," the Breaker pilot replied a bit blandly.   
  
"Ohhhhhh, just _peachy_," Mark added. "Wake up near the ass crack o` dawn, spend the whole day fighting, watch my hometown explode up into a big pile of shit, get stomped a bit, run for my life to someone else`s home base, get stomped again, run some more, spend the night welding away a hole in a ten or twenty ton steel door, then _this_ shit. I feel like I`m gonna pass out for a _week_, man..."   
  
"Wouldn`t blame you," Bill replied, choosing not to throw his own troubles onto the fire. Pity parties weren`t his style, although both of them were more or less _entitled_ to one right about now.   
  
"Anyone who would is a pig fucking sadist. And an asshole. Definately an asshole."   
  
"Ye-" "**_`EY! SOLJUH BOYS!_**"   
  
"... _Not that shit again_," Mark sputtered out exhaustedly, half-cracking out a laugh in the process as he hung his head. Bill only rose a brow at being interrupted...   
  
"**_YOU, ME, SUCKY SUCKY, TEN DOLLA!_**"   
  
"... What the _hell_?" He finally yelped out, bolting upright and turning red in the face at the rather _loud _words blaring out in a very poorly imitated foriegn accent, while Mark simply continued hanging his head and let out a sigh.   
  
"Now ya see why I went for the short one," he sardonically muttered out before finally heaving himself up to his feet as a white-and-black Gustav pulled up, the green cockpit glass flipped open to reveal two young, tan skinned women with green hair, one about to burst out into hysterics, the other about to have a conniption.   
  
"Well, at least they seem to`ve done _something _decent," Bill replied after a few seconds, still red in the face as he regarded the downed, trailered form of the blue Geno Breaker.   
  
"How`s it hangin`, Blue Eyes?" Pierce asked once the Gustav had finished grinding to a stop, just a few yards from the downed form of the Shadow Fox.   
  
"Been better," Bill answered simply, although both he and Pierce seemed to be ignored as one Abigail Summers literally _heaved _up out of the cockpit of the Gustav, landed and broke into a sprint in the same motion.   
  
"Markie!" She shouted out with the same ear piercing kind of voice that characterized a fangirl. At the last moment, he managed to turn to face her, only to recieve a smack to one cheek. "_Don`t you ever_-" A smack to the other cheek. "_Do that to me again_!" And then his old, worn out baseball cap was jammed onto his head and a pair of surprisingly strong arms had wrapped around his waist so firmly that his back actually popped in and out of alignment. Twice.   
  
"**_I WAS SO WORRIED!!! I THOUGHT I WAS GONNA LOSE YOU!!!_**"   
  
"... I can`t feel my legs..."   
  
"Ahhhh, _love_," Pierce commented with a cynical amusement, while Mark guhhed, Abbie half-bawled and Bill just stared.   
  
The crackling screech of an alarm blared through the hangar, followed by the sound of someone banging the unholy _hell_ out of a cooking pot with a hammer, which was in turn followed by good ol` fashioned yelling.   
  
"**_WAKE UP, BOYS AND GIRLS! WAKE UP!_**" The voice kept repeating, causing one Leyla Tsun to slowly, blearily sit up on her mattress, throw aside the sheets and shift a glare in the man`s general direction. He looked to be in his mid-twenties, with short, unkempt dark red hair, built like a freight train with an attitude to match, wearing an almost stock-issue jumpsuit, save for the shredded sleeves and the white t-shirt worn beneath it.   
  
_ "Couldn`t he have the human **decency** to wait until people can get earplugs on to go banging on that thing?"_ She growled out in thought, even if it made little, if any sense.   
  
"**_I THINK WE`RE ALL UP BY NOW, CARSON!_**" Someone finally screamed out annoyedly as a boot went flying through the air, beaned the pot-banger upside the head and caused him to fall over.   
  
"**_OW!_**"   
  
Leyla blinked.   
  
_ "Well, at least I **know **I`m not in the army now," _she thought with a passing sense of relief, if only because she`d always had a slight aversion to being in a _real _army. Too much rigid confinement in that sort of thing, while Champton`s defense forces were little more than a glorified militia when it really came down to details.   
  
Either way, she soon slipped up and out of bed while Carson hauled his lug of a self off the floor and started shouting profanity all the way over to the kitchenette that had been set up in the hangar`s corner. With a raised brow, she started to pull her socks and boots on, ignoring the fact that other people were stripping down to their underwear or nothing at all and changing in full view of her. Modesty didn`t seem to last all that long in a group of would-be soldiers, even if they _were_ all civilians who`d had to haul it into gear to fight a war that held no boundaries or rules.   
  
Not that Leyla would be stripping down and waltzing about with everything hangin` out anytime soon, but still.   
  
"Anyone got any idea why we`re bein` woken up this early?" She asked aloud, drawing several blank looks before someone wearing a jumpsuit with a Hacksaw Squad insignia on the right chest pocket spoke up.   
  
"Welcome to the real world, kid-newbie. We`re on morning stand-by and evening patrol, we don`t get to sleep late," he stated, hobbling around on one foot while tying the laces of his boots.   
  
"... Ah... Right," Leyla replied after a few seconds, feeling the stares of some of the others in the hangar starting to fade away, replaced by morning routines that hung on the bare threads that kept Champton from coming under siege.   
  
A few disdainful comments still managed to nip at her ears though. They ranged from spoken thoughts of how she was simply a kid who thought too well of herself due to having been a Class S pilot, to snide words said about how reality would end up hitting her like a ton of bricks when and if the call to action eventually came - and everyone there _knew _that it would.   
  
With that in mind, she finished tying her boot laces and stood up somewhat uneasily, stretching here and there.   
  
She would just have to prove them all wrong, which is just what she resolved to do.   
  
For now though, some coffee would have to do in place of acceptance by all of her piers.   
  
** [**_"And what`s gonna happen that`s so terrible?"   
  
****_ The Sleepers are going to awaken, and find that they are strong...   
  
_ A chill ran down his spine. Where the howling winds and horrific weather of before had once been a **near** comfort, in a way, the silent, eternal afternoon twilight was as ominous as any grim smile or hellish cloud of smoke could ever be._**]**   
  
It nagged at him for so many reasons that he couldn`t even comprehend them all, let alone articulate them. Zeke`s being unconscious still wasn`t helping matters. Everything seemed to take on a new, deep and troubling significance, from the distant multi-colored glows of the hundreds upon thousands of tons worth of mysterious crystal that dotted the landscape to the Organoid`s lack of presence in his thoughts, even Roc`s cryptic warnings were starting to come back to haunt him a small bit.   
  
** [The trials which you will pass... Will not be easy ones.]**   
  
_ Why-   
  
_** [To succeed, is to know victory at an impossible price.]**   
  
- did that _damned_ Organoid have to-   
  
** [In truth...]   
  
** - be so cryptic all the time?   
  
** [They will probably be the hardest battles, that you will ever live to fight.]   
  
** "None of this feels right," he muttered out with a barely suppressed cringe, green eyes shifting from left to right in an almost paranoid sense of awareness. It felt almost as if he were walking over some kind of mass gravesite, or through a graveyard that held no tombstones. Even the stale, scentless air in the cockpit felt as if it were waiting to get him.   
  
The movements straight ahead, performed by things near the base of the Dome, things he couldn`t scan or make out just yet, weren`t helping matters either.   
  
** [**_"You knew who I was going to fight the last two times... What about now?"_**]**   
  
There had never been an answer to the question, and that nagged at him the most. Was it someone who held some kind of significance to him, or perhaps someone who held significance to Roc alone? An Ancient Zoidian, maybe?   
  
** [**_"... What about the Sleepers then? What are they?"   
  
****_ Beasts who live only for destruction. They have fallen from their once lofty stations, their Bondmates lost to time. The only purpose they have left is to battle, and when they are awakened, they will bathe this land and others in a hellstorm unseen since the days of the Endtimes.   
  
_ Another chill shot down his spine, Bit figured it best to stop asking questions right then and there. He honestly didn`t want to know anymore, anyway._**]**   
  
Something popped from the back of his thoughts to the forefront, eyes reflexively narrowed and caught sight of something approaching in the distance.   
  
It was a solid purple Iron Kong, covered in guns and bladed weapons that he had never seen before, with flaring green optics and sensors that stood out like sore thumbs to Bit`s eyes, even through the orange tint of the main screen.   
  
Slowly, the Liger Zero came to a halt, golden clawed feet sinking a few inches into the hard packed snow and ash-filled grime that still blanketed almost every feature of the terrain that he could see. The Kong kept coming, starting to pick up speed as a pair of hyperbeam guns flipped over its shoulders and took aim, followed by the two shortened Supercannons that had replaced its original ballistic missiles. The buzzsaws on its wrists flipped forward and whirled to life, while its green optics lit up even brighter than before.   
  
Bit Cloud`s tongue slowly but surely slipped into his cheek and stayed there.   
  
A few seconds later, explosions and a fierce roar echoed through the once unnerving silence of Nyx, shattering it completely.   
  
An orange and black lit up out in the vast wasteland of arctic desert that surrounded the Dome, yet in the tower that one man had called his 'home' for the past week or so, it was only visible as a bare speck against the grey backdrop surrounding it, as fleeting as a snowflake in the palm of one`s hand. Within a second, the orange had been replaced by more black and the smoke cloud had been blown open by a white blur, one that stood out visibly from the grey mush surrounding it.   
  
Slowly but with a certain charisma that not even being alone could quite diminish, Vilhelm Rommel took a sip of wine, a finely aged brand that probably cost enough that it could`ve put an average student through four years of college and paid for his first car in the process.   
  
_ It`s starting.   
  
_ "I noticed," he replied seamlessly, green eyes tracking the white blur`s movement as part of it tinted gold. Another explosion followed, only barely audible through the inch or so of sloped, heavy duty glass that formed the outer walls of his temporary quarters, a former lookout tower that had been hastily converted into a luxury suite. Solid steel arced through the glass in perfectly positioned vertical lines, ending with a circular plate at the very top of the roof, supported by a single gigantic girter that ran to the floor. Luxury furniture, some of it borrowed from other offices, others simply built out of what was available, dotted the room, ranging from a heavy oak desk that had originally belonged to Commander Brogan, to the industrial-looking floor lamps that were placed in a perfect six-point pattern around the room.   
  
The only thing that didn`t seem all that luxurious was the urinal tucked away in a hidden panel within the central girter.   
  
_ I still don`t see why you made those last minute changes.   
  
_ "The other prototypes and standards were all just taking up space and giving the base`s crew too much of a chance to escape with their lives. Bit Cloud has shown himself as gaining a substantial increase in raw ability when his emotions hit the breaking point, as they probably will before the end of his battle with the Storm Breaker. This way, we wear him down mentally and physically, thus decreasing the chance of that boost giving him a critical edge which might force the Breaker`s pilot to kill him, at the same time getting rid of any possible chance that the Dome`s crew has for escape."   
  
There was a pause. Vilhelm took a sip of his wine and watched as the now golden blur rammed into a pack of smaller, jagged looking red ones.   
  
"Rather simple, don`t you agree?" He asked, taking a sidelong glance in Spectacle`s direction, though he was only able to see the Organoid`s pointed snout and jagged rows of teeth in the process.   
  
_ Not to me, but that`s why you`re the strategist.   
  
_ "Exactly."   
  
A few more seconds ticked by in near silence, underscored by the distant death cries of Rev Raptors, their dual pile banker units flying off or imploding all together, along with severed and broken limbs. Maimed bodies were starting to litter the hardened grime in a path leading towards the Dome.   
  
"How long do you think it will take him to reach the kill zone?"   
  
_ Probably not too long.   
  
_ Sniper rifles cracked off their shots, and a few seconds later, the battered, mutilated carcass of a Snipe Master hit the ground, stoning over as the slash wounds in its chest faded away.   
  
"At this rate, I`d give it another five minutes or so. The Breaker should be deploying right about now, too."   
  
Another Snipe Master was hit by a shortlived barrage of impact rounds and toppled over in the midst of trying to fire its missiles. The third, and final Snipe Master let out a shriek as its shields were broken off and its body torn in two a few moments later. Vilhelm looked decidedly unamused, although a charmingly grim, unenthusiastic smirk forged its way onto his thin lipped, pale skinned face a few seconds after the trio of Snipes had been killed.   
  
"He`s not pulling his punches this time around," he observed.   
  
_ With Zeke unconscious for the duration, and with how hard his last battles have all been, I can`t say that I`m surprised_, Spectacle replied with an air of snide amusement.   
  
A few seconds passed by, Vilhelm took a slow, lingering sip from his glass, emptying it completely before setting it down on the small table standing to his side, both hands tucking themselves behind his back in an orderly fashion. It was all underscored by the howling death cries of a Konig Wolf, its stomach ripped open and internals left to fall where they may from a Strike Laser Claw. A prompt snap of the jaws to its head crushed the cockpit and silenced it for good before it had even landed.   
  
"And so, it begins," Rommel finally stated in a hushed tone, more to himself than to the Organoid towering over him from behind.   
  
"Stand back, please."   
  
"If you fuck up _any_ of his systems, I _will _break my leg off in your ass."   
  
"You`ve said that six times. Just shut up and back off or you can drag the damn thing yourself, gimpy."   
  
"_Bah_, whose side are you on, anyway?!"   
  
"He _knows _what he`s doing, Kyle. Just look at the Fox."   
  
"Or the Raynos."   
  
"Or the Storm Sworder."   
  
".... Ffffft. Fine, but if he fucks up a-"   
  
"**_SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY!_**" One Bill Chapman let out annoyedly, glaring knives and daggers over his shoulder at the equally annoyed, albeit significantly more busted up form of Kyle Mazemia, who looked about ready to rip his intestines out and strangle him with them.   
  
Naturally, this was because Kyle was feeling rather protective of his Blade Liger, and who _wouldn`t_? He hadn`t exactly met Chapman at all earlier in the morning, and he hadn`t even seen the miracles that he was capable of either. They`d hauled him out of bed to get him to see only _after _Bill had repaired all the Zoids a second time, with the exclusion of the Blade Liger in question. Even though almost every Zoid currently residing in the hangar had been instantly overhauled during the morning, it was a leap of faith that Kyle was obviously somewhat hesitant to take.   
  
Finally though, the silver haired pilot, still clad in all the bandages he`d needed to have put in place last night, simply huffed, puffed and complied. The fact that Kat looked a step shy of grabbing his crotch with a vice and squeezing it until something popped was probably a deciding factor.   
  
"Go ahead," he stated as an afterthought, crossing his arms over his mostly bare chest and waiting impatiently.   
  
With that, Bill placed his hands onto the broken down Liger`s front right paw and spoke up, mumbling out a few things to the Zoid and then falling into a state of what looked like deep concentration.   
  
Eyes winced shut, but neon blue still seemed to flicker out from between their lids, his hold on the Blade Liger`s paw tightened beyond belief, until it almost seemed like skin was going to tear or metal would start crumpling.   
  
And then the Zoid began to move.   
  
Slowly but surely, it started to lift itself up from the steel floor, as if revitalized by something that couldn`t truly be seen, yet was still _blatantly_ there. The battle scars across its once ivory hull began to fade away with increasing speed, until a blindingly bright, heavenly blue glow shut up all around it from the ground, almost as if it were becoming a miniature star with no heat. For seconds on end, the blurry outline of the Liger stood its ground, until finally, a roar broke the tense, awe filled quiet of the hangar.   
  
Like glass, the light broke away, some of it actually falling to the ground, some of it flittering up into the air like a butterfly, and more of it still fading away before it could do much of anything at all, until finally, the Zoid beneath was laid bare, its mouth still open in the ground shaking cry it was still letting out.   
  
Of the group at hand, none was more effected than the Blade Liger`s pilot, not even Bill Chapman, who dizzily stepped back from it until falling backwards, where Pierce had the presence of mind to catch him under each arm and set him down in a sitting position.   
  
The Blade Liger had changed. It wasn`t just ivory in color anymore, it now boasted red lining its body at key points along the way. Its blades looked a little thicker, a bit longer and a bit deadlier, and its claws were now different, with each toe seperated from the other right at the base. Its impact cannon had gained a third barrel, similar to that of its smaller cousin, while its fangs had been visibly strengthened, all of them now the same striking shade of silver that colored the Zoid`s claws. Even the stabilizer caps had changed, become a bit thicker and a bit more powerful.   
  
Although the changes seemed to be entirely aesthetic, _something _felt as if it were churning beneath the surface, something that made the Ivory Blade Liger feel more and more _alive_ than before. It was almost as if the thing had become an entirely different Zoid all together, yet was still exactly the same as it always had been.   
  
"... Someone pinch me," Kyle muttered out, practically a step shy of drooling on himself. A second or so later, his cheek was yanked and twisted and his ass felt like someone had it between a pair of pliers. Sideways glares went to both Mark and Katherine, the first of whom was threatening to tear half of the silver haired pilot`s face off, while the other was just copping a feel for no other reason than to do that.   
  
At once, both pulled a bit, Kyle had to struggle to balance on one foot.   
  
"Could you two _stop doing that_?!"   
  
"Fine," both replied, each one giving a solid yank as they let go. As a result, Kyle toppled over sideways and let out a yelp mixed in with a string of profanity that would`ve made a sailor blush.   
  
At about that time, Pierce finally spoke up, a voice of surprisingly casual reason amidst the Blade Liger fanboyism/fangirlism that had overtaken just about everyone else over the course of the past minute or so.   
  
"So... Who`re we gonna put in charge?" She asked, finally finding her cigarettes and lighter.   
  
"Eh?" Mark voiced while Kyle twitched around on the floor.   
  
"... Well, we can`t stay here forever, and we can`t just run around like a chicken with its head cut off either," she pointed out, lighting up without a second thought. By now, Kyle had finally clawed his way up off the floor, and was presently breathing fire, spewing neon green vomit and screaming unholy curses in Mark`s general direction - all of which was ignored.   
  
"She`s got a point," Jamie commented, having finally arrived in the hangar after spending the past hour or so taking a shower. A very, very, _very_ cold shower. The kind that induced hypothermia in penguins. "We`ve got a hundred or more people to have to take care of, us included. The base`s supplies may hold out for a while, but without Farentown, they aren`t indefinate."   
  
A bit of quiet followed, everyone seemed to mellow out from their former Blade Liger oggling.   
  
"We`re gonna have to get moving soon, and when we do, we`ll need a command structure or we`ll just end up burning ourselves out and being picked off along the way by bandits," he added, walking right by the Ivory Liger with a raised brow, but no real impression made by it.   
  
"Don`t s`pose we could just shove the job on you, huh?" Mark finally asked, tucking his hands into his pockets as the reality of the situation continued to dawn on everyone.   
  
"I`m not leader material, just a strategist. And pilot," Jamie answered with an unusual bluntness to his voice, finally stopping in front of everyone else.   
  
"Then we should vote on it," Abbie pointed out, rocking back and forth on her heels.   
  
"Count me outta the running too, I ain`t much of a leader either," Mark tossed in.   
  
"Same," Kat added.   
  
"Count me out too, I`m just a medic and a driver," Abbie put in.   
  
"I hate giving orders," Pierce stated bluntly. No one really _wanted_ to be put on the spot like this, but it eventually left things to only two pilots.   
  
"No thanks," Bill said, and then there was one.   
  
Kyle Mazemia finally stopped spouting profanity and almost instantly straightened up. The burden of responsibility that everyone`s default 'voting' had thrown on him had hit like a ton and a half of bricks. Within all of a second, he had switched from the crazed whipping boy of Marcus Harlock to someone else all together, someone with the kind of charisma and natural authority that seemed to draw out obedience and loyalty like a magnet grasping nails from thin air. Even his _voice_ seemed as if it had changed.   
  
"Well then..."   
  
There was a shortlived pause as he brought a hand up and scratched the side of his neck, just above one of the bandages in place there.   
  
"Let`s start moving. We`ll head to Ro-" "Romeo City was totalled last night. About the same time as Farentown, I`m guessing," Bill cut in, voice a bit strained as he did so. Kyle didn`t even miss a beat in continuing.   
  
"We`ll just head to Champton. Get everyone together in one trailer, get anyone who can help to try and help load up all the supplies we can cram into the other - fresh water, canned foods - stuff that won`t go bad without refrigeration. Abbie," he paused, glancing at the shortest of the women, who promptly glanced at him with a raised brow. "Get some people and start grabbing the medical supplies, we`ll probably need `em."   
  
She gave only a nod, running off without so much as a word after pecking Mark on the cheek.   
  
"Pierce-" "I`ll go dig around the pantry," she stated a bit intuitively, tucking her hands into her pockets and waltzing off after Abbie. "C`mon newb, and you too when ya can, Billy," she added as an afterthought, only to vanish into the hallway after a few more seconds.   
  
"_Billy_?" Chapman half-sputtered with a rather annoyed twitch, glaring knives and daggers in the hall`s direction.   
  
"And you?" Mark finally asked, glancing over to his shorter, albeit more skillful comrade.   
  
"I`m gonna get some damn clothes on so I don`t look like a friggin` _gimp_," Kyle answered bluntly, practically sliding back into his usual manner without missing a beat.   
  
"... Ah, right, right..."   
  
"And _I`m_ coming along to keep him from making an ass of himself while trying to look cool," Kat added in.   
  
"You do realize, however," Mark paused, letting out a cracked grin that _almost_ compared to the trademarked expression of Leena Tauros.   
  
"Hm?"   
  
"You`re still my bitch, _chinny_."   
  
"Keep dreamin`, _newbie_."   
  
Grey turned to black, Zoid after Zoid fell in a rampage towards the colossal structure known solely as the Dome. Every second seemed to bring a new chunk of debris - a severed arm, a broken leg, decapitated head or shredded tail. The focal point of this slaughter, which formed into a steady, violent trail that started at the broken remains of an Iron Kong and got worse from there, was a single black and white Liger, sleek and angular, imposing in every way, shape or form.   
  
Alone it stood, leaving behind a defined path of destruction in its wake.   
  
For a few moments, its pilot paused, catching his breath after impaling a Scout Fox, only to look up from the floor and see an incoming tide of Sinkers and Saber Tigers, all of them lead on by a lone Gun Sniper. With a twitch of one blonde brow, the pilot cracked his neck to the side, took a deep breath and let out a scream.   
  
"**_GET OUTTA MY WAY!_**"   
  
The Liger roared in support, booster panels flipped open and claws lighting up as it hurtled forward towards the mob, only to leap up at the last second. Forelegs smashed down onto the back of a Sinker, smashing it into the ground, yet the Zero was already lunging away by the time that the smaller Zoid had finished going off course, sabered teeth plunging into a Tiger`s head and tearing the whole beast off of the ground as if it were a limp rag doll caught in the jaws of an enraged predator. The Saber let out a shriek of pain and went flying into the air with three flips, only to crash back down and crush the Gun Sniper as it prepared to fire its rifle.   
  
The group fell into disarray - Bit Cloud took advantage of it and opened up his shield. Another Sinker exploded, then another, and another after that before the shield had dropped and an uncharged claw had slapped into the side of another Tiger`s head, decapitating it in one clean blow.   
  
The next five minutes were little more than a blur of violence. What remained of numerous Zoids` bodies flew through the air and crashed down, one after another, sometimes even in groups, but when it was all said and done, the Liger Zero continued on, stampeding over their fallen carcasses and practically flying through the air as it approached the Dome.   
  
It wasn`t long before it had made it to the huge structure, passing underneath its shadow after countless deaths and the war cries that fuelled them, but when it did, it was greeted by a sight that sent chills down the spine of its pilot.   
  
A warped Geno Saurer stood alone at sunset, waiting for the Liger as if they were gunmen in the Wild West of ancient times, before humans had ever even come to Zi.   
  
In place of its original back cannons, two triple gattling rifles were mounted, the barrels of each one extending a few feet ahead of its shoulders. Gunpods, not unlike those of a Geno Breaker, were locked to its hips, with a single light gattling gun mounted to its head, a pair of machine guns situated at either side of it. The beast`s talons had been sharpened, and its hands possessed the tell-tale lines of the concealed forearm particle cannons that the Proto Breaker had used, while a large, back-tilted mortar pod, similar in shape to the one between the Panzer`s Hybrid Cannons, sat above and behind the main gattlings, unopended for the time being.   
  
It was red, the color of blood, with the same purplish vents as most Genos, with charcoal optics and silver talons and teeth, its heavily armored tail swishing about slightly as it started to step forward, moving at a slow, deliberate pace with its jaw opened, revealing the silver tinted barrel of the charged particle cannon, drawn back in the neutral position.   
  
The Geno lurched forward, coming to a stop over a kilometer away from the Liger Zero, feet spread, mouth opening and closing as if taking in the last rancid breaths of Nyx`s air before a slaughter. Bit replied in kind, bringing the Zero forward a few last steps and taking a readied position similar to that of a hunting lion. Both pilots and both Zoids hunched forward, waiting for some unseen cue in the seemingly eternal twilight of Hell.   
  
It was then and there that the ground all around the bases of the Dome started to ripple and tear, _hundreds_ of Saber Tigers, Rev Raptors, Iron Kongs and Command Wolves, even a few Heldigunners and Lightning Saixes tore themselves up from the grimey grey mush that dominated the landscape, all of them lit up by the cooling orange glow of the lava that still flowed across the battlefield to be.   
  
Bit Cloud had walked into a trap.   
  
He knew it.   
  
And he didn`t care.   
  
"If you`re my last test, you`re not gonna be half as hard as I thought you`d be," he spat, recieving nothing for his trash talk. In a way, he felt the same tingle in his skin as when he`d first fought Kale`s Geno Saurer without knowing who the other pilot was, except that the stakes now felt even higher than they had back then.   
  
** [**_"You`re predictable."_**]**   
  
Before, the whole world hadn`t been unknowingly counting on him.   
  
** [**_The Liger`s back snapped like a twig._**]**   
  
He couldn`t allow himself to make anymore mistakes. Zeke and Vega weren`t there to save him this time.   
  
None of the Zoids clustering around the edge of the battlefield fired, making not even a sound as they seemed to watch and wait, guns at the ready, bristling for combat, but held back by the very presence of the Geno Saurer. Sun and moonlight clashed across the Zoid`s back, and finally, _finally_...   
  
It roared.   
  
Alone amidst its own numbers, imposing as tyrannical despot, holding the reigns on an army that seemed poise to die at its whim, it roared.   
  
Confronted with a single foe like none it had ever faced before, and like none it would ever face again, the Geno Saurer X Storm Breaker _roared_, its war cry breaking through the former silence of Nyx like that of a tyrant king facing down the only other monarch _brazen_ enough to confront it on its home turf.   
  
The Liger Zero replied in kind, and their duelling voices seemed to shake the ground and the skies alike, rattling the legion of lesser Zoids to action. Ignorant of them, however, both the Zero and the Breaker charged forward, boosters flaring to life at the exact same instant, feet leaving the ground, both multi-ton bodies heaving over lava flows that would`ve burnt them alive and screaming, headed for an inevitable clash that was going to shatter lives and set the stage for the grand finale.   
  
And above everything, as a chess master watching pawns play their roles in a game they didn`t even realize existed, Vilhelm Rommel grinned the grin of the damned, and savored every second of it.   
  
Off in the distance, a pair of blue and red eyes narrowed so subtly that it was almost invisible, while a great, bladed crest of reflective feathers twitched upright. In an almost perverse mirror to the mannerisms of Vilhelm Rommel, he watched from on-high, senses beyond compare able to register the crack of every gunshot, the impact of every blow and the surge of adrenaline it all brought. As one among three who saw what was happening, Roc viewed the onrush of movement and desperation with an alarmingly neutral sense of calm.   
  
** The Reign of Chaos has ended**, he thought to himself, though Madison was bound to hear it regardless of distance and barriers.   
  
** But the Tides of Darkness roll on...   
  
**

_ End Reign of Chaos...  
  
_

* * *

  
  
** Author`s Note:** A wee bit shorter than the 105kb record set by the last chapter, but **HOLY FUCK-MONKEY BAJESUS HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!**  
  
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, ROC is now, officially **OVER**, and hopefully it all drove you ruthlessly, murderously insane from the cliffhanger-ness. Suffice to say, the last... Half-ish of this chapter practically fell into place earlier today, and I can honestly say I`m **quite** pleased with it.  
  
And yes, if you noticed it, it was intentional. Not that I`m saying what **it** was, but...  
  
Heh heh... That said, ONTO T3H REVIEWS!  
  
**Chaotic-Swordsman-Brad:** Glad you loved the last chapter so much, and as for Warcraft names - there really isn`t any particular, meaningful reason as to why I used them after NA. They just fit. That said, one of the prequels(when they`re written) may end up being named Frozen Throne, so take that however ya will o_O  
  
**Vega Obscura the King:** God won`t save you, I`m bribing him >D  
  
**The Big Fisch:** I thank Bill for the improved battle. Not only was it easier to read, but you guys have **NO IDEA** how much easier the damn thing was to write too o_o; Was a shame Henry got offed, but ah well. It was a good learning experience on how to handle such gigantic mofo-class battles, least for me it was. And as for the Black Shield Liger..  
  
You`ll see. It`ll probably not have any major significance for whats left of ROC/TOD, but **eventually**...  
  
And no, it`s probably not XD  
  
**Akino Ame:** Nah, my lackies in the White House would never allow such a thi-...  
  
You didn`t just read that. It was gas from Venus.  
  
And I HTML the sucker line by freaking line, manually. And by the way, I repeat what I said last time: None of my Big Four casualties have been taken out yet(although after re-thinking everything up, it might be as many as nine or ten who I have left to axe off...). The Hellwalker Battle was a blast the second time around, it had a few stumbling points for me, but it was **INFINITELY** easier to write the thing the way it turned out this time. And yes, the 90+ kb chapters are satisfying, both to write and read, I`d imagine, but I`m **really** gonna have to tone it back a bit in TOD, at least on a few of the chapters, otherwise this crap`s gonna cause my brain to explode like a pocket nuke x_x  
  
**Tilly:** Neh, dunno how to do the auto-HTML feature, so I do it all manually on my own. And I doubt most people have all the stuff on my soundtrack lists, I don`t even think Zinou does and I tend to swap songs with her every other chapter o_O; And yeah, the Specific Scenario Battles of Shiny Pointy D00m aren`t exactly easy to write most of the time without being repetitive, but I **think**(hope) that I`ve stumbled upon the proper formula for handling them.  
  
And to me, the Shadow Fox sounds like its howling/barking through a synthesizer for some reason :P  
  
**Illidan:** I`d be amazed if normal society can integrate **itself** back into itself by the time I`m done with it, let alone one freak of nature XD  
  
*Idly shovels out some grey matter and plants a garden in Illidan`s brain.* >_> Need somewhere to dispose of the bodies, yesyes...  
  
**Rhade:** Glad you enjoyed it, and especially glad just about everyone seems to`ve taken to the OCs so damn much over the course of NA and ROC alike. Here`s hoping they continue to leave a good impression on you guys. And go read Zinou`s stuff, she`s at **least** as good as me, if not better o_o;;  
  
With that all said, **THAT`S A WRAP, FOLKS!** See ya when TOD comes out!  
  
Sh33p out. 


End file.
